By Sheldon Greaves
Previously posted on Unexpected Leisure, 03 March 2011
My spouse and I have moved several times in our married life and each time it happens I am stunned by how much stuff has accumulated. This is a common thing. We’ve helped friends to move and they express similar dismay at how many things seem to have wormed their way into their lives. Generally, they don’t view this as a good thing, which might say as much about the nature of our friends as anything.
The matter of physical possessions is something that comes up throughout humanity’s philosophical and spiritual traditions. The famous Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes had no possessions to speak of and lived inside a barrel. Jesus told his followers to “…not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on.” (Matthew 7:25). Christianity has a long tradition of ascetic and monastics who renounced possessions and took vows of poverty. in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, many Christian thinkers became enthralled by Neoplatonism which held that matter itself is evil and corrupting. This informed many aspects of Christian theology thereafter.
Eastern religious traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism also display a certain distrust of stuff. Japanese Zen Buddhism has a rich tradition along these lines, one of my favorite exponents being the Zen poet and calligrapher Ryokan, who lived in the early 19th century. Hinduism likewise has a strong element of denying the lure of possessions as one of its Four Paths.
All of these traditions hold that one can improve one’s life by reducing or even eliminating one’s possessions. When you’re getting ready to move (actually when you’re about half way through it), these ideas seem incredibly sensible. If you don’t have so much stuff, then you don’t need as large a place to live, but there is an undeniable sense of serenity when you are not surrounded by disorder and messes. Reducing things makes that possible. I confess that our rather large personal library makes me less than “sinless” on this point, but I think that it’s not just the amount of stuff you have, it’s the choices you make and the control you’re willing to exert over your personal surroundings.
The advertising industry, as I have mentioned before, is a problem here because they are incredibly good at manipulating people into acquiring stuff they don’t need and might not even want. It costs them money and can be a drain in other ways. When times get hard, as they are now, you face the temptation to hang on to something that is manifestly useless “just in case” you need it, although it’s hard to imagine a scenario where that applies. The other side of the coin is that having less stuff makes you more agile. You can pack up and move more quickly. You probably won’t need to spend as much to maintain yourself.
So here’s an exercise. Think about what you would keep, if you had to reduce your life to what could fit on a 3′ x 4′ shipping pallet, stacked about 5′ high. Feel free to exclude critical furniture if you like, but give it some thought. You might find yourself thinking in a different way. I’ll be returning to this subject in later installments, but do feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.