Close your eyes for a few seconds and picture all your belongings¹. Can you see them? Now pick up the item you value most. Fine. Open your eyes again and continue reading. We’ll get back to your most cherished possessions² later on….

We live in a strange world. Everybody understands that things are made for us to be used when we need them. However, that is not true anymore. People have been buying stuff much more often for other reasons. We buy things because we simply like them, want them or because we need them to show our fine social status. Getting things has never been easier. You don’t need cash to get what you want as we use contactless payment³ systems. Moreover, we don’t have to leave our houses to go shopping as the Internet is full of e-shops. Getting stuff is fun! Let’s take a trip to our homes to see what we like owning.

CLOTHES AND SHOES. Trendy designer clothes and shoes are extremely popular today. The more expensive and famous the brand⁴ you get, the more respected you seem to be among your friends.
ACCESSORIES. It’s interesting to see how much money people spend on purses, bags, wallets, belts and jewellery. Sometimes the desire to own something cool goes too far, and people pay for fake stuff.
ELECTRONICS AND GADGETS⁵ . We seem to be obsessed by new technologies. Come on, how many of you value your i-phone the most? Our households get crammed with phones, notebooks, tablets and computers.
COSMETICS. This is where advertising really does its job. We all want to be young and beautiful as long as possible. Hundreds of little bottles and tubes seem to be a great investment.

Now you may think the author of this article hates owning stuff and suggests we all should give up what we have, leave civilization and start living like hermits⁶ somewhere far-far away. That is not so. The point is we should think about what we consider valuable. Is it the materialistic world with all the goods that make us happy and proud?
One day, you will enter your Grandma’s empty house and find yourself cherishing a box of old photographs more than a china vase. That will be good sign!

STOP TO THINK:
• Now back to the first paragraph of the article. What is your most valued possession and why? Discuss it with your classmates

Miroslava Dubanová

Vocabulary: 1 osobný majetok – osobní majetek; 2 cenený majetok – ceněný majetek; 3 bezkontaktná platba – bezkontaktní platba; 4 značka; 5 zariadenie, prístroj – zařízení, přístroj; 6 pustovník – poustevník