Stuff... And things

Eight ways that money can buy you happiness: (1) “Buy more experiences and fewer material goods.” (2) “Use their money to benefit others rather than themselves” (3) “Buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones” (4) “Eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance” (5) “Delay consumption” (6) “Consider how peripheral features of their purchases may affect their day-to-day lives” (7) “Beware of comparison shopping” (8) “Pay close attention to the happiness of others.”

You lit yourself on fire on December 17, 2010, exactly nine months before Occupy Wall Street began. Your death two weeks later would be the beginning of so much. You lit yourself on fire because you were voiceless, powerless, and evidently without hope. And yet you must have had one small hope left: that your death would have an impact; that you, who had so few powers, even the power to make a decent living or protect your modest possessions or be treated fairly and decently by the police, had the power to protest.