10.05.2014

you are not your stuff

I came home one day and it was all gone.
If my 28 year-old self would have walked into the home of my 30 year-old self, he would have thought he’d been robbed.
Where did all my stuff go? He would have thought. I worked so hard to buy all that stuff, and now it’s all gone!

My 28 year-old self would have panicked when he noticed that over 90% his stuff was no longer there. It was gone. Vanished. Poof! He had given so much meaning to that stuff—the car, the clothes, the gadgets, the trappings of a consumer culture that he was a part of—but that stuff didn’t have any real meaning.
He was part of the disease, not the cure.
There were so many lessons he learned in those two years…
How to start:
Let’s play a little game together.
Find a friend or family member. Someone who’s willing to get rid of some of their excess stuff. This month, each of you must get rid of one thing on the first day of the month. On the second, two things. Three items on the third. So forth, and so on. Anything can go! Clothes, furniture, electronics, tools, decorations, etc. Donate, sell, or trash. Whatever you do, each material possession must be out of your house—and out of your life—by midnight each day.
It’s an easy game at first. However, it starts getting challenging by week two, when you’re both jettisoning more than a dozen items each day. Whoever can keep it going the longest wins. You both win if you can make it all month. Bonus points if you play with more than two people.