While growing up in Catholic family and going to a Catholic elementary school, I was taught that poverty was somehow virtuous. Some of the most influential people in my young life took vows of poverty as this was supposed to bring them closer to this non-material thing called God. Even after rejecting religion, my exposure to some other “spiritual” practices in my 20s and 30s professed that materialism is on some level, immoral.

Now I’ve finally gotten over all of that and embrace life as a materialistic adventure. After all, even the most “spiritual” person cannot avoid all things material; they just don’t enjoy them. They still have clothes, furniture and shelter. The food they eat happens to be material, as is all of nature. One can’t help but bump into material everywhere, and despite the “everything is nothing” theory of quantum physics, I have yet to see anyone pass through a wall.

It comes down to a choice of with what kinds of material are you going to surround yourself. I happen to enjoy the fact that I’m writing this on an Apple MacBook while I sit on my beautiful patio surrounded by trees and flowers. I like that when I go inside later I will sit on a modern, comfortable couch in a room with splendid artwork. Would sitting on a couch with holes in it from the Salvation Army in a room with Wal-Mart posters make me a better person? I don’t think so. Nor do I think that doing so would make me a lesser person.

We do live in a material world for the short time we are here. We can choose to shun the nicer material things and only bring into our life the minimal and inferior. Or we can acknowledge that our very essence is that of forms and solids and choose to surround ourselves with those material things that make life more pleasant, more enjoyable – provided we appreciate them.

If there is anything at all to spirituality, we’ll have plenty of time for that later when the material of our bodies decomposes into the elements of the earth. For now, I declare myself a materialist, and endeavor to be a good one.