How Selfishness Leads to Waste

There is a television series called Hoarding: Buried Alive. In each episode, a person with hoarding issues is helped to overcome their hoarding. Hoarders are people who collect things - anything - but to the extent that all the stuff they collect piles up in their house and a great deal of it is destroyed.

Hoarding often springs from emotional issues - but it almost always boils down to selfishness. The person, in their childhood, was denied something, and now that they’re adults, they can’t get rid of anything because of that. Other times, it begins when they loose someone they love, and because they couldn’t hold on to the person, they hold on to stuff.

But it still almost always boils down to selfishness. Because they were denied something, they want everything now. Because they want everything, the stuff they have never leaves their house. Things get buried and eventually they are worthless. What they attempted to save, they are destroying and wasting. Often they hold onto trash!

Quite often roaches, mice and rats get into their house and destroy what’s at the bottom of the piles. That’s wasteful.

People who hoard are don’t want to let go of what they have. They’d rather it fall to waste than it leave their house and find a new home and get taken care of. It’s a very confusing mentality, though there are few who don’t suffer to a degree. People who can’t get rid of stuff are selfish.

Oh, they have reasons. They don’t want someone else to have it because that person might throw it away or break it. What they don’t realize is that they’re ruining it, which is just as bad - or worse, because there was also a good chance that that someone would have loved and kept it in wonderful condition. But, through hoarding, this chance was denied.

It’s the “I don’t want to share my things” attitude. And while there is the principle of ownership and one shouldn’t be forced to share anything they don’t want to share, one shouldn’t keep things they aren’t using and will never use. Some people save things for emotional reasons, and while that is okay to an extent - keeping too much for that reason is not.

Saving stuff you can use later and stuff that really means something to you is one thing - saving things you’ll never use and that you attach some ambiguous attachment is not. Remember - you don’t have to keep things just so you don’t offend someone. Most people be much more offended by your impenetrable house than by your getting rid of something they gave you.

And if they don’t - they have serious selfishness issues!