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Why Happy People Own Less Than You Think

The Surprising Wisdom of a Generation that Never Needed a Smartphone

Kristie Leong M.D.
4 min readMar 24, 2025
Image made with Bing

I was thinking about how my grandmother used to make a cup of tea. I still remember the way her hands shook slightly as she poured hot water into her favorite cup — the white one with a hairline crack running down its side.

A Memory in a Cracked Teacup

She had that cup forever but refused to replace it.

When I asked her why she didn’t buy a new one, I got a simple response. “Things don’t need to be perfect to be precious,” she said.

That’s when I started thinking the way we live in modern society. (My phone buzzed four times while writing this article. )

Emails, texts, social media — all scream for attention and chime when we ignore them. In this fast-paced world, they refuse to be denied.

Image made with Canva

The Overload of Modern Living

And we’re drowning in stuff too. Closets bursting with clothes we never wear, and Amazon packages dropped on our doorsteps almost daily.

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Kristie Leong M.D.
Kristie Leong M.D.

Written by Kristie Leong M.D.

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