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 😋 

Explore unschooling's impact on education, family, and society in our latest podcast, where authenticity in learning shines Read more
Whether your child is drawn to academic subjects or alternative pursuits, this episode reassures you that unschooling is about respecting each child'…Read more
When we arrived to the big house at Baja, we had to kick ourselves hard to remember how great this is - even when the temperatures are about 10 degre…Read more
We were excited about going to the next place. As always, of course, but this time, we would finally meet again with friends from the castle experie…Read more
Do you also want to evaluate at the edge of the new year? I want the statistics: How many museums, how many cities, how many beach days, where did we…Read more
Arriving in Tijuana. The most overwhelming thing was the wall. Oh, my good. I have to say it. It is crazy. Cra. Zy. Double metal fence construction o…Read more
We canceled the plan to go out on the ocean to swim with the big fish because we are exhausted from being "the tourists with the dollars," paying and…Read more
We needed to buy gasoline halfway through our trip and arrived at a gas station that was out of electricity. Therefore, they could not pump the gasol…Read more
It is very hard to take good pictures of dolphins, especially if you are at the same time trying just to enjoy the moment and save some hours in the …Read more