People Are Optional
There was a time when the home was designed around togetherness.
Families may not have had much, but they had shared spaces. Children shared bedrooms. Families shared one television. Meals happened around one table. If someone wanted to watch something, everyone negotiated. If a child was upset, there was often nowhere to disappear except into the same rooms occupied by everyone else. Privacy existed, but so did unavoidable human contact.
We have since become wealthier, more technologically connected, and far more comfortable. Yet somewhere along the way, our pursuit of comfort has quietly redesigned the family itself.
We wanted bigger houses so everyone could have their own room. Then every room needed its own television. Every child needed their own tablet, phone, headphones, gaming console and eventually their own digital universe. Parents created home offices. Children created online worlds. Couples could sit metres apart while living entirely different evenings.
We called it independence. Perhaps, without realising it, we were also building walls. The tragedy of materialism is not simply that people want things. Human beings have always desired comfort, beauty, security and progress. There is nothing inherently wrong with a pleasant home, a good car, an iPad or a television. The danger begins when possessions stop serving people and people begin serving possessions.
A larger house requires a larger mortgage. A better car requires another financial commitment. Private schools, expensive holidays, designer clothes, newer phones and the constant upgrading of lifestyles demand increasingly more income. More income demands more work. More work demands more time. And eventually the very things we purchased to give our families a better life begin taking us away from the family we were supposedly building that life for. A strange equation emerges.
We work longer hours so our children can have beautiful bedrooms, yet we spend less time sitting in those bedrooms talking to them. We buy them devices because everyone else has them, and then wonder why they no longer speak at the dinner table. We give children everything we never had, sometimes without asking whether what we lacked materially may have inadvertently given us something valuable emotionally.
Sharing teaches negotiation. Waiting teaches patience. Compromise teaches empathy. Not always getting what we want teaches resilience. Living alongside people teaches us that other human beings have needs, moods, preferences and boundaries different from our own. These are not small childhood lessons. They become the architecture of adult relationships.
A child who grows up experiencing life primarily through individualised spaces can easily begin to understand happiness as personal convenience: my room, my device, my programme, my food, my timetable, my preference.
Then adulthood arrives. Suddenly there is a spouse who does not behave according to one's preferences. A colleague who disagrees. A neighbour who is inconvenient. A manager who does not provide instant validation. A relationship that requires sacrifice. Children who disrupt carefully constructed lifestyles.
Real human relationships become frustrating because unlike technology, people cannot simply be muted, blocked, upgraded or switched off. This is where the consequences become more profound. If childhood teaches us that fulfilment comes from acquisition, adulthood can become an endless race to acquire something slightly better than what we already possess.
A better salary. A larger home. A more prestigious title. A newer car. A more impressive holiday. A more successful-looking family. A more enviable life.
“The problem is that comparison has no finishing line.”
There will always be someone richer, younger, more successful, better travelled or apparently happier. Materialism therefore creates one of life's cruellest paradoxes: the person may possess increasingly more while feeling increasingly inadequate.
Career ambition can then quietly mutate into career greed. Work is no longer simply about purpose, contribution or providing for one's family. Titles become identity. Salary becomes self-worth. Colleagues become competitors. Networks become opportunities. Friendships become useful connections. People stop asking, "Who is this person?" Instead they unconsciously ask, "What can this person do for me?" Relationships become transactional.We see it in workplaces where kindness disappears the moment someone loses influence.
We see it in neighbourhoods where people can live beside one another for years without knowing each other's stories. We see it socially when friendships are sometimes measured by access, status or usefulness. And sadly, we can even see it within families.
Parents become providers rather than companions. Children become achievements rather than individuals. Spouses become economic partners managing mortgages, schedules and responsibilities while slowly forgetting why they once chose each other.
Nothing dramatic necessarily happens. That is what makes it dangerous. Families do not always break with shouting, betrayal or catastrophe. Sometimes they simply drift into separate rooms. One person watching Netflix. Another scrolling through social media. A child gaming behind a closed door. Another child messaging strangers online. Two parents sitting in the same house communicating through WhatsApp. Everyone connected to the world. Everyone disconnected from the room.
For children, this environment can shape expectations about love itself. Love may begin to be interpreted through provision: what was bought, where we travelled, what school we attended, what birthday present we received. But adulthood eventually teaches a harder truth. Possessions cannot sit beside you when you are grieving.
A job title cannot hold your hand when you are afraid. A luxury car cannot tell you that everything will be alright. A house cannot love you simply because it has six bedrooms. When life's inevitable storms arrive, illness, redundancy, ageing, heartbreak, failure, loneliness, it is rarely our possessions determine whether we survive emotionally.
It is people. And relationships cannot suddenly be summoned in moments of crisis. They are cultivated slowly through hundreds of ordinary moments: dinners, arguments, laughter, apologies, long conversations, boring afternoons, shared responsibilities and simply being present.
That is why perhaps one of the greatest gifts parents can give children is not unlimited comfort, but the ability to live meaningfully with other human beings.
Let them share. Let them wait. Let them occasionally be bored. Let them understand that the family television does not always show what they want. Let them experience conversation without a screen sitting between two faces. Let them see parents disagree and reconcile. Let them witness generosity that expects nothing in return. Let them understand that success is admirable, but character matters more. Let them learn that money is a wonderful servant and a terrible master.
Because wealth itself is not the enemy. There is dignity in working hard. There is joy in creating a comfortable life for those we love. Poverty should never be romanticised, and financial security unquestionably gives people choices, safety and opportunity. But wealth should expand our humanity rather than shrink it.
The question therefore is not how much we own. The question is how much of us our possessions own. If maintaining our lifestyle means surrendering our marriages, our friendships, our children's childhoods, our health and ultimately our peace, then the price is considerably higher than whatever appeared on the invoice.
Perhaps the richest home is not the one with a room for every person. Perhaps it is the one where people still choose to sit in the same room. Where dinner remains an event rather than a refuelling exercise. Where children know their parents beyond the credit card that pays their bills. Where spouses still speak about dreams rather than only schedules. Where neighbours become friends. Where colleagues remain human beings rather than stepping stones. And where success is measured not simply by what we accumulated during our lifetime, but by how many people felt genuinely loved because we were part of theirs.
We spent generations trying to give ourselves more space. Perhaps now we need to rediscover the courage to come out of our rooms. Because a life filled with things can still be desperately empty. And sometimes, in our relentless pursuit of having everything, we risk losing the very thing we were trying to build in the first place: a life together.
