STUFF
I am at the stage in life where the weight of all the stuff that you have begins to weigh on you. I can’t take it with me, I have to get rid of it somehow. I live in a consumer society which certainly encourages me to collect stuff through incessant advertising invitations and through providing an income, although modest by American standards, that allows me to buy almost anything that I fancy. Years ago when I discovered the flea market and thrift stores and yard sales in which Americans were trying to unload stuff, often beautiful stuff, at giveaway prices, I became hooked on stuff. For years I was a flea market addict. And so my house is full of stuff, beautiful stuff, interesting stuff. A good deal of the stuff is Kathe’s stuff, which now I have to find a way to disperse to people who will like it or to offer to anyone who wants it or simply throw away. Right now I can’t face that and so will quite happily go on surrounded with her stuff. But someday . . . Both hers and mine or else someone else will have to do it.
At least ten times I took groups of students to Sri Lanka for three weeks or a month during which they would have a home stay in a Sri Lankan village where they would live very simply. They almost inevitably reported on how happy the people seemed to be living, from an American perspective, with almost nothing.
We were hosted by Sarvodaya, a Buddhist village development program which believed and lived the Buddhist ideals of non attachment to things and of living simply. Sri Lankan’s have a high literacy rate, low infant mortality and universal health care at a very basic level and enough to eat and in an always warm climate, adequate housing. We were impressed, but not impressed enough to not return to our old ways when we came home.
Yesterday when I was picking out the 18 pounds of stuff that I would take on my trip, constrained by my free luggage allowance, I realized that 18 pounds were adequate for a one month stay, or a two months stay, or a stay for months and months. Everything I really need I can carry in a carry on bag. Everything I need I can carry on my back or pull behind me, light as a bird.
So I look at my bag again to see what I am taking with me and how I can do this. One reason is that to live comfortably I can get by with much less stuff, I don’t need a closet fully of shirts, I just need two. I don’t need a houseful of stuff to get along. But another reason is technology. My two pairs of pants are both lightweight but also very easy to wash by hand and therefore change regularly. All my clothes are wash and wear, a term we take for granted now but didn’t when I was a boy and everything was hard to wash and had to be ironed.
But it is in the other part of the stuff that I am taking with me that technology makes the greatest difference. I am taking along about 1000 Kindle books on my iPad and millions of songs in Apple Music and an entire art collection and a photography collection including 100’s of thousands of photographs of my own, and thousands of movies and TV access, most of this floating above me on a cloud, which I connect with when I want. I have a phone, a flashlight, a watch, a TV set, a typewriter, stationary and on and on, all virtual, taking up no space at all and at the most being stored in a tiny portable hard drive.
And that sets me apart from the Sri Lankan villagers, I can have just as little actual stuff but a houseful of virtual stuff as long as I have the willingness to learn to use it. I not only have a telephone along but can see the people I love back home, face to face, any time I want to. And, of course, none of this is free. I still need a good income.
I have the best of both worlds, I can live with almost no physical stuff and have a houseful of virtual stuff, meaning that I can live in a very small Airbnb with only a bed and a table and a tiny kitchen and a small bathroom and still have everything necessary that I have here at home.
It is all battery operated. I need very little energy consumption to get along and if I stay in a place for month at a time I don’t have many transportation costs.
It seems pretty clear that this is the direction the world needs to go. We can all live comfortably and well with very little actual stuff in small houses without big yards close together with less need of transportation.
The question is whether, as after the visits to Sarvodaya when I returned to my old ways, I can change to this new way of living, or whether I will continue in the old way, weighed down with a house full of stuff. But I will certainly have demonstrated to myself that it is possible to change if I am willing to.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 