Transcendentalism Reflection

Looking at the effects of greed in Tolstoy's short story as well as in real life, I'm not a big fan of material possessions. Let me rephrase, I don't think that posessions are the worst things are the worst but they become dangerous when they affect us and change our perspectives on the world. A lot of times people become bored with what they have which leads them to search for more, which, in their minds, means searching for hapiness. In fact, matrials don't play as huge a role as we would think. As long as we separate our personal ideas and values from the reach of possessions, we can live with them as a part of our lives.
Too often I see people spoiled by what they have. This bothers me. First off, whenever we get something, we typically fail to think about where it came from. The most common instance of this is a lack of gratitude from a small child or even an adult. While the behavior of the child is acceptable and it is not so extreme with adults, we still see traces of this imaturity towards expectation in society. A large part of this expectation is a sense of entitlement. We feel that we deserve the things we want, even if we don't need them. Here is where the corruption of possessions comes in; it starts to rule even our thinking.
Once we feel deserving of the things we have and those that we strive to receive, we begin to take other things for granted. It's very easy to see how taking things for granted could be bad in reference towards wanting more but at the same time, our obsession with possessions alters our attitudes towards our daily lives. Even if we might not feel it, there is a small sense of glory and pride that we get from the things we have and those that we plan after going through the appropriate steps.
In a way, having things makes you less likely to work towards something worthwhile other than more things. I feel that we always set our eyes on the next greatest knick-knack rather than the intagibles that we can find in experiences and other situations that don't include owning things. There is so much more beyond items that we could be exploring rather than staring at our favorite new product until it bores us. I say get out there and fix your eyes on the real world. You don't own it. You never will. Go out and see as much as you can before it gets tired of you.