The World offers us endless ways to feel complete. Those ways include objects, routines, comforts, stability and reassurance. We don’t actually wake up wanting these things, we wake up wanting a feeling and we gradually, start looking for the said feeling in objects. Most of us don’t question the role these objects play in our life, we buy and replace them and move on to other objects without stopping to ask ourselves what the object was meant to give us, did it fulfill its purpose? was it a bad purchase? no, we don’t ask ourselves these questions. To question the purchase, we made would mean to question the need and desire that came before it and that’s the question most of us avoid.

There is a strange comfort in owning these things. They give shape to our lives, fill our homes, and promise “completion” even though deep down somewhere, something remains unsettled an uneasy feeling. Just like in Fight Club, The Narrator fills his apartment with objects not because he needs those things but because he hopes it will complete him and fix the unease in his heart. But it doesn’t and he goes on buying again. A sofa, a table, a shiny lamp he saw in an advertisement. He tells himself he chooses them, but little by little, the logic is flipping. His time starts revolving around the image those objects portray. He mustn’t quit his job, the job has to stay, he needs to work more hours, sacrifice his sleep, sacrifice his health and even sacrifice his sanity, for what? For installments.

The objects start demanding. He is not free anymore; his behavior is now being dictated by his furniture. First, the objects took over his personality, then, his emotions. He cannot show anger anymore, its unprofessional. Everything must be swallowed no matter how bitter it is. The insults, exhaustion, dissatisfaction, he cannot show irritation, he cannot show irritation no matter how far his boss pushes him. Because the fear of losing his job, missing payment on his installments, losing his apartment, failing to uphold the image those objects demand is way stronger than his will to be “free”. 

Wrapping Up with Key Insights

Just like Tyler Durden says, the things he owned, ended up owning him. Then one day he stopped, he didn’t try to fix himself by buying more things, he fixes it by breaking the system, through pain and chaos and even literal blood, he fights. The fights aren’t really a solution, they represent a jolt, a reminder that his mind is trapped in a system, and the only escape is destruction. Tyler Durden is the expression of the destruction; he is a mirror to show him his entrapment. The things, the objects that once owned him no longer dictate his life. For the first time in his life, he is free. He doesn’t let mere objects define him.
The uneasy, unsettling feeling in us, isn’t a flaw but a mirror showing us that we are losing control over ourselves. True freedom begins when we stop asking the objects to complete us, when we stop being consumers and start facing ourselves, without any hint of possessions.

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club