Road warrior leaves home with seven pairs of socks and discovers one of life’s great secrets.
Today is my 42nd day away from home and living on a motorcycle. Every now and then I compare a rough list of what I have with me to all the stuff—the tons of stuff—I have filling my house and garage at home in Santa Cruz, Calif., and I think about how I have not needed any of it to live and be happy in recent weeks.
What the hell is point of all the crap I own? I have wanted for nothing on this trip.
I think far too many of us in the U.S., myself included, are so busy working ourselves into an early grave that we don’t take the time to truly live and have rich experiences. So, instead of filling our lives with experiences, we fill them with possessions and needless junk. We are concerned with getting the new car, the fancy watch, the latest iPhone, the new tile in the kitchen, etc. Those items simply distract us and give the illusion of being happy until the shine of whatever we bought wears off and then we’ll need to go buy something else.
But one cannot buy enough possessions to fill the holes in life that should be filled with experiences. The amount of money spent over the course of a year, or a lifetime, on things we don’t really need is staggering.
Why not take that money each year and go live, go do something so cool you won’t be able to stop talking about it for years to come?