Tuesday, March 1, 2011

On having less stuff.

I'm starting to experience a feeling that I last had about 6 years ago. 6 years ago we made our first break from the ordinary American lifestyle. But It all started 10 years before that when my father had died 6 months after retiring at the age of 60.5. He had worked hard and accumulated loads of stuff and dreamed of sailing off in his 25ton custom steel sail boat. He had been installing batteries when he died on a sunny warm October morning in Florida. We had been planing to sail the boat to Europe and mom would fly over. His death shook my world.

It took me about a year to really begin to understand what we missed. That's when I decided to leave "normal" life by age 45. Stocks were roaring so at 43 my wife and I were beginning our new life and selling the house, giving some furniture to Goodwill selling other stuff on Craigslist. I was a car/motorcycle nut. 7 years ago I had 4 cars, 3 motorcycles and a 34ft catamaran with twin inboard diesels for a family of 2.

Then one day as we sold some of that stuff I woke up and had this peaceful feeling and realized how much tension I had tied up in that stuff.  I then remembered a homily our priest had once given and in the end he had asked whether we owned our stuff or our stuff owned us? Now I knew. But I didn't get rid of everything, oh no 2 motorcycles and a car had to be kept in storage.

Well here we are years later and my life of stuff has again defied thermodynamics and increased in complexity. I was back up to 3 cars, 2 motorcycles, and a couple sailboats and wanting to build a Tiki. Something had to give. Now the Goldwing is sold and solid plans to sell the BMW and MGTD. And I've sold about 40 odd books and car/motorcycle parts and more to go. It really feels right.

No comments:

Post a Comment