If you had to live out of a suitcase, could you?
A little less than a year ago today, I was packing up whatever life I had in London into two suitcases and a backpack, getting ready for the premature goodbyes and inevitable departure back to the United States. Eight months before that, I packed up my life in Brooklyn into a U-Hall and drove cross-country to my childhood headquarters. Now, I am packing yet again, this time from a stunning water view apartment on the East Side of Manhattan and am flying to the Midwest for a month and then the UK yet again. Instead of spending over a thousand dollars on a third U-Hall, this year I decided to sell my furniture and fly home with only two checked bags, a carry-on, and a backpack.
Standing on a bar stool disconnecting the Christmas lights fastened to my ceiling, I realized that the 45-foot winding cord housing 200-some encapsulated pods of golden light was one of the few things I owned that I really would have a hard time parting with. A suitcase and a half held piles of folded clothing, most of which I barely even wore; the heavy duffel with all my shoes was literally just that—additional weight I now had to carry onboard with me. The multitude of things I was taking home felt so foreign to me. Why did I need so much of it all?
It’s a peculiar thing… To most people, trying to pack a life into two suitcases seems impossible. Aside from furniture, we tend to fill boxes upon boxes with so much stuff whenever we move. Yet to me, my two suitcases were too much.
From across the room, I scanned my stack of books. Each paperback and hardcopy contained hundreds of paper pages, some with my own marginal notes, others with teardrops from words more powerful that any cinematographic scene. I wasn’t much of a reader growing up, but those books right there in front of me—those written works of art—they taught me, moved me, inspired me, and most importantly instilled an unbounded curiosity within me. Oh, how I wished my suitcase contained more literature than leggings.
On my wall, a black-and-gold scratch map of the world. All my stuff makes it difficult to fit the soon-to-be-rolled account of my travels, but it is one of the few things that absolutely must make it home with me, wherever home may be at any given time. It serves as a reminder that dreams are meant to be big and they can be achieved, one country step at a time. It reveals to me the written stories of some 8-billion people that I have not yet read and the just shy of 9 million species I have not yet discovered. It gives me perspective. On the map, Maui is the size of a spec of dust; we are all even smaller than that.
Like the sandhill cranes and their annual migration, I seem to always leave. The places I have been, the people I have met, the adventures I have experienced and the new ones soon to come—they are all stories within a greater story still being written. My camera and my journal are probably the last of the stuff my eye can see worth packing and taking with me. The two are my writing tools, allowing me to incorporate what I see, hear, learn, and feel into this great never-ending universal novel.
Our stuff isn't the end-all. It is not an ever-impending evil, at least it doesn't have to be. We will always have possessions, but it is in our ability to recognize the truly important things—the people, the world, its secrets, our own selves—that life's trivial worries fade away.