Back

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

Cecilie Conrad·Oct 17, 2023· 2 minutes

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-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

Thank you for reading
I would love to hear from you. Listen to your thoughts and reflections - or praise :) It is often emotional to share our lives like this, and we get very happy when we get your feedback. So feel free to share a comment below 😋 

I am reading this book and I just love it, Antifragile. It is a perfect concept. This is how we are strong: Risktakers, awake and alive, ready for mi…Read more
Feb 15, 2021
Are we homeless?
Technically we are homeless – But the abundance of freedom, the beautiful sunshine, the adventures, and the peace is amazing. Read more
Feb 14, 2021
Be my valentine
We believe it was no coincidence, we saw the red bus for the first time on Valentine’s day. The red bus has everything to do with love. Read more
We have the freedom and the means to go where we want to go; we earn enough to live the life we want, we do the education at home; no one is attached…Read more
Our Weekly Art & Nature Challenge! One of the big wins of the unschooling, full-time traveling & digital nomad lifestyle is time. Time to be together…Read more
The dream became a plan, the plan became a to-do list – we bought a bus, rebuilt it and finally, we did the transit into full-time in the summer of 2…Read more
We have been a nomad family for two and a half years. It is not an eternity, but it is a long time. The kids have grown, we have all learned. The que…Read more
Children are forced to internalize the values and structures of society, telling them school is for the better. Let us set the children free. Read more
My sons are laughing so hard, they can hardly stand, as we were voluntary and together in our home – studying Sokrates and the discipline of logic. Read more