Do You Live Life as if It Were a Giant Game of Monopoly?

A most striking and beautiful piece of music was playing on the radio. I did not know what it was, and I started listening intently, letting it soak into me, but then I noticed my mind wandering as if to own the music, to possess it.

It was like it was not enough for me just to enjoy the moment. I needed to memorize, understand, and analyze what I was hearing to capture that moment. And in doing this, I was no longer enjoying it. I was not even really listening anymore. I was no longer just in that moment with the music flowing into me.

What stopped me from being in that moment? In asking that question, I remembered the humanistic psychologist Erich Fromm. In his classic book To Have or To Be? he wrote about "having" and "being" as two different mindsets or attitudes towards life.

Fromm described how having was a dominant cultural mindset and ultimately at the root of many of our personal and social problems. The having mindset is so deeply ingrained within us that it can take over and push our being out of the way.

The having mindset poses an essential problem for humanity. Fromm writes about how it derives from our materialistic culture in which having as a mindset is prioritized over a being mindset.

Since the pioneering work of Fromm, many other psychologists have gone on to discuss how a more materialistic attitude to life is damaging to us in terms of contributing to a range of psychological dysfunctions, such as depression and anxiety. But even if a person does not suffer from severe psychological problems, at the very least, a materialistic attitude will be an obstacle to developing into a fully formed and mature human being.

It often seems that most of us treat life as if we were just playing a giant game of Monopoly in real time. Who can amass the most wealth and property and exploit the other players?

I remember the delight of playing Monopoly as a child, how exciting it was when I was doing well, but the misery and tears when it was going badly. Remember what it was like if you were one of the players who ran out of money and had to leave the game, or when you were going around the board hoping for a bit of luck just to stay afloat?

We seem to have taken the experience of being alive with all its joys and opportunities for personal development and turned it into a dehumanizing game. It is a game in which we learn to value only what brings us monetary gain.

The emotional fallout from consumer culture is very real, but people rarely connect how they feel to how they look at the world and the values they choose to hold. We truly need so little in the way of material things to be contented in life. We need a sense of purpose, meaning, relationships, a sense of agency, good health, and the resources to be safe and secure.

It is difficult not to succumb to the having mindset to some degree, as it is how society's systems are organized. It feels like we have no choice but to live as if we were the pieces on a Monopoly board. But we can be aware of the choices we make in life and the pressures on us and begin to steer our lives either down the path of having or being.

That way, we can learn to enjoy a piece of music without needing to buy it, go for a walk, and appreciate the wildflowers without plucking them, or any of the other ways we can be more harmoniously and authentically in the world. For some, this is what it means to lead a more spiritual way of life.

It may not be easy to let go of the having mindset and replace it altogether with that of being, but research findings suggest that each step further along that path is worth taking if we want to lead happier and more contented lives.

This post is adapted from my book Think Like a Therapist: Six Life-Changing Insights for Leading a Good Life.