Holding On

Holding on is easy to confuse with strength.

We hold on to titles, plans, possessions – even versions of ourselves. Some of them were never fully ours to control.¹ The longer we hold on, the more they begin to hold us.

Fight Club took that idea to an extreme: “The things you own end up owning you.”²

Experiences tend to bring more satisfaction than possessions.³

But we can hold on to experiences too – perhaps even more strongly when they become part of how we define ourselves.⁴

Modern life gives us plenty of ways to hold on to that identity. We do not just build it. We market it. Where we have been, what we have achieved, what we do.

Letting go can look like losing grip. Sometimes it is.

But sometimes the grip is the problem.

What are you holding on to that has started holding on to you?

Epictetus distinguishes what is within our control from what is not in the Enchiridion, placing property, reputation and office among the latter.
David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999) has Tyler Durden tell the narrator, “The things you own end up owning you.” IMDb places the line at approximately 31:14.
Weingarten, Evan, and Joseph K. Goodman examine the “experiential advantage” in Re-examining the Experiential Advantage in Consumption: A Meta-Analysis and Review, published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2021. Across 360 effect sizes from 141 studies, they find an overall advantage for experiential consumption, while also identifying important moderators and evidence of publication bias.
Carter, Travis J., and Thomas Gilovich examine how purchases become part of identity in I Am What I Do, Not What I Have: The Differential Centrality of Experiential and Material Purchases to the Self, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2012. Experiential purchases were more closely connected to participants’ sense of self and more likely to feature in their life stories.