The Minimalist Approach to Travel: Choosing Being Over Having | Day 289 of my 2023 Journal

To be or to have?

There is so much stuff we don’t need in this world.

Moving into backpacks, we realize in extreme detail how little stuff we need.

I see how human nature is being exploited. The malls and supermarkets have refined the techniques to tempt people to buy things they don’t need, and the culture of all moving pictures is pushing the idea of the good life as a life with access to a lot of stuff. Inside houses and closets and bags and vehicles (all of that stuff, too), we own stuff, so much more stuff than needed, stuff numbing and drowning us.

I am no saint. I am not even slightly good at this. But I do accept the challenge, and I feel the immediate benefits of less whenever I let go of even the smallest thing.

These days, we are preparing our bag packs for a seven-month tour - and shipping a perspective of our travels. We want more clarity and focus, more peace. This is not just another adventure but a shift in how we do things.

We know we need to build new habits and new dreams - in the reverse order.

We start from the core, from values, and work from there. Peace, love, health, finances, passion, adventure, clarity, and - I am sorry to say - admin. Maybe that can be stuffed under the “finances” element?

The fix is to assemble enough energy to do something about the stressors, avoid consumerism, list the essential life elements and what to act on, and start in one end.

There is no way around it.

Traveling has the great advantage that every time we move to another chapter, it seems to come naturally to focus on these things, and we wake up as if we were having an existential nap.

With love

Cecilie Conrad

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