Some Thoughts About Experiences & Posessions
Tuesday morning, and 35 days to go!
Last night I stayed up terrifically late watching this show about a couple buying their first house. The wife was horrid, and every few minutes, a graphic would pop up on the screen detailing her preferences and “must haves” in neat little rows. Her dopey husband did everything short of pounding his chest to show what a good provider he was, and their 1 year old daughter just had to have a bay window in her room.
Why am I telling you this? Because it got me thinking about how few of the things we “must have” are actually necessary at all. I thought about families around the world living in tiny apartments, overcrowded tenements, or nowhere at all, and wished that a few dollars from every bay-windowed nursery sale got kicked their way.
When they started talking about square footage and how “there’s no such thing as too much space”, I looked across the room at my backpack and found myself grateful for its small size. Compactness has definite appeal when you’re carrying your life on your back, and maybe other times too. The more I think about packing up my house, the less of my stuff I actually want!
(not actually my pack, but close enough)
As I drifted off to sleep, I congratulated myself on my lack of materialism and dismissed HGTV altogether.
And then today I changed my mind. It occurred to me that those people were spending their money on a house because they wanted to have the experience of living in it, and maybe that’s not all that different from us paying for the experience of traveling through Asia. Maybe it’s false to believe that if someone else gets what they want, it hurts everybody else’s chances.
I hope this trip changes me forever. I hope that little girl got her bay window with the sun streaming in. Most of all, though, I hope the world grows into a place where everyone gets their real “must haves”.
As I drifted off to sleep, I congratulated myself on my lack of materialism and dismissed HGTV altogether.
And then today I changed my mind. It occurred to me that those people were spending their money on a house because they wanted to have the experience of living in it, and maybe that’s not all that different from us paying for the experience of traveling through Asia. Maybe it’s false to believe that if someone else gets what they want, it hurts everybody else’s chances.
I hope this trip changes me forever. I hope that little girl got her bay window with the sun streaming in. Most of all, though, I hope the world grows into a place where everyone gets their real “must haves”.
September 15th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Okay see I’m back already. #1, Julia, I hope someone decides to make a book out of this trip and your blog, I’d of course read it
#2, I’m not thinking quite as articulately as you were up there but it is saying something that everyone has their idea of the perfect place of being (at least for a little while) and not nearly everyone even gets to come close to realizing what that might be let alone actually residing in it for a while, so I hope all your hopes for this trip come true.