It’s my stuff!
I recently reread George Carlin’s great routine about ‘stuff.’ I especially love two lines in the routine. “Ever notice that other people’s stuff is their shit and your shit is stuff?” Or, “A house is a big box to keep your stuff in.”Here’s a rundown on my stuff. I used to own a house. Shared. Think about how much stuff is in your house. Start with the big things like the antique mohair sofa (500 pounds), the recliner chair (200 pounds), your bed, springs, and mattress (800 pounds). Then there are little things like your kitchenware. My set of layered steel pots and pans that I bought just before my daughter was born weighed close to 250 pounds! And did you know that your china weighs a ton? And your silverware? And all the gadgets like the 30-pound VitaMix. Of course, there are the lightweight items. Your clothes probably only weigh 300-400 pounds. Your artwork, photos, CDs, DVDs, video tapes, LP records and all the devices you need to play or record them are another half-ton.
I left on August 10, 2013 with just what I could carry in the back of the truck and in my little trailer. And my daughter. She doesn't weigh anything!
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When I began paring down my stuff in order to travel three years ago, I determined that I could only carry an extra 750 pounds in addition to the weight of my trailer and water. The very first thing I did was throw out nearly 500 pounds of paper! These weren’t books. This was just paper that I had collected—some of it for forty years—that included drafts of things I had written over the years, samples of projects I’d done, training manuals I’d written for products that don’t even exist any longer, old catalogs, magazines that I intended to read an article in one day, and Christmas cards from twenty years ago. My wife and I once joked that humans were ants who instead of moving grains of sand around, moved pieces of paper from one place to another. It seemed like it was our life’s purpose. I stopped carrying paper. Mostly.
Back in '91, we had a leak in our house and the closet where all my writing was stored got drenched. The insurance paid to have everything dried out. But, while the pages were all dry, nearly all of them were blank. Water soluble ink and pencil. I was storing boxes of smelly blank pages!
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That brings me to books. If you are a book lover, you could summarize the entire ‘stuff’ argument by pointing at your library. Children’s books from when you were little through college textbooks, technical manuals for your electronics through bestsellers and beloved novels you plan to read again. And for me, it included volumes of ‘rare books’ from the nineteenth century that I’d lovingly collected for years. Hundreds—thousands—of pounds of books. What do I take in my allotted 750 pounds?
In Budapest, I have seen more bookstores and more street vendors of used books than anyplace I have traveled. I write books. I shouldn't be talking about getting rid of them, should I? What sacrilege!
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They traveled light.
Wagon ruts of the Santa Fe Trail, sometimes so deep you couldn't have seen the heads of the oxen and mules pulling the wagons.
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Not so. I’ve seen the ruts of the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail. They shattered my image of wagon wheel ruts worn a few inches into the soil and still visible. We are talking about ruts eight feet deep through dirt and stone, the center worn by the feet of the oxen and scraping the bottom of the wagon against the ground. The weight that six oxen pulled across the continent was measured in tons! That bed with the walnut headboard that is six feet tall? The matching chest of drawers and wardrobe? All the pots and pans and even a cast iron stove that you would need to cook meals? Saddles, harnesses, tools, a plowshare, clothes, precious heirlooms, a truly rare book. The pioneers did not travel light. And thus, bits and pieces of households were scattered across the continent because they needed to lighten their load.
I got my life down to 750 pounds. Except for some things in storage that I couldn’t get rid of. Ten boxes of genealogical research and source material. Said rare books. Glassware that I couldn’t sell. Artwork that is worth thousands when you buy it as an investment but is nearly worthless when you try to sell it. It was not stuff that I didn’t want to get rid of. It was stuff that no one else wanted either!
Stuff.
When I decided to spend four months in Hawaii, I emptied my trailer into storage, packed a single suitcase (the size of a camping backpack) and a computer size backpack. That was what I took with me. When I left Hawaii to spend four more months continuing around the world, I eliminated more stuff and shipped some back to storage in Seattle. My suitcase weighs about 50 pounds. The backpack (since I had to add another computer to it) weighs about 25. I’m down to 75 pounds. I just bought a shirt because I didn’t have anything long-sleeved and it’s cold here in Europe. Now I’m looking at my suitcase to decide what gets left behind that I’m replacing with that shirt.
I didn't actually take the cat, but that's about everything else that I have been traveling with for the past six months!
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But when I talk to people about traveling, the most common comment I here is “Oh, I want to do that!” My answer is “No you don’t. You want to dream about doing that.” Because it's hard. You have to leave stuff behind.
And that is my opinion about space travel and colonizing the distant stars. Every space movie that comes out has an even bigger spaceship or deathstar in it. Because we can’t imagine going off to colonize space in something as small as a Conestoga wagon per family. We’d never get our stuff into it. And we certainly couldn’t leave our stuff behind. What would we do with grandma’s collection of salt and pepper shakers?
As often happens, I looked up a reference in The Book of Wesley (CC128) that I confess to having written some 35 years ago. “128. It is most frequently seen that the “saviors” (those who seem to live outside the realm of physical law) have no possessions and are possessed by no one.” (http://bookofwesley.blogspot.com/2013/10/cxxx.html)
Space is even bigger than the ocean. Never lose your towel.
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And so are those who would colonize space. If we would go, we will have to leave everything we know and all our stuff behind. I think we will have to look to those who have nothing for volunteers.
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