People have to find someone more ambitious than them, more interested in the worldly things than them, more ‘greedy’ than them and immediately the lines will flow, “We cannot carry anything with us, why run behind materialistic things?”, “You leave behind everything when you die, why hanker after such stuff?”
It is true that we leave behind stuff when we die. So does it mean we cannot be interested in material things beyond a point? People buy and use things in this life and are not preparing for ‘afterlife’ if it exists. The drive, the ambition, to achieve things, wanting to break new frontiers in our lives is innate in all of us. Material prosperity is the side benefits of the work. How much is enough? How much should be enough? At what age should one stop chasing material prosperity? Who is to decide? Why not leave it to each individual to discover what satisfies them?
All the things that we buy are for our life here and now. Our philosophers tell us that what we carry is only the sum of our deeds. But what is missed is that our possessions are the by-product of our deeds. They are perhaps the incentive to create those deeds in the first place, so why does that get so much of focus?