You picked it up
"Everything you're carrying, you picked up."
I'm not quite sure where I heard that line but I remember the day I began to understand it. I was lost. I had just gotten off of work and as I opened my door, I remember having to walk over boxes and boxes of stuff just to get into my room.
In my way, there were at least fifty little boxes from Reverb.com, Ebay, and TGP purchases, a big box for a roadcase I had custom-made, a box for a smaller board I ended up not wanting to use—it was just all just garbage in my way.
I got into my room and got settled and I remember a book fell off the shelf, setting in motion a cascading rainfall of trinkets and knick-knacks and sort-this-laters collapsing to the floor, the consequence of asking that shelf to hold far more than it was built for. I began to pick all of these things up off the floor.
There was a letter from the bank, a notice from my insurance company, a screwdriver, a flash drive, pens and pencils, countless unopened credit card offers, a picture of an old friend, a leather journal. As I stacked them no more gently than they were stacked before, I noticed the shelf itself was falling apart. A plywood and pressboard IKEA-find and a true testimony to the impermanence of mass-manufactured crap, this shelf lasted all of two years before showing signs of damage; not age, not wear, damage. I bet it wouldn't burn in a bon fire. Or maybe it'd light up like paper...
I was unhappy. I was surrounded by things that were supposed to bring me joy and I was unhappy. We live in a things world. People want things, so they buy things hoping to have things, they post pics of their things, they're unsatisfied with things so they go out and get more things, sell those things to get other things; we work 40+ hour weeks to fill every room in our oversized homes with things. We go into debt for things.
I was the king of things. In my closet alone, there were floor to ceiling stacks of folded clothes (ok, bunched up clothes) where the shelves could no longer hold them and they spilled over. There were 11 or 12 winter coats, 10 or so jackets, probably 70 shirts. 30 pairs of shoes—I did count those as I painfully chose which to donate, which to try to recycle, and which to just toss. There were also over 300 books in my closet, which I stacked up in there when another poorly-made plywood faux-finish set of bookshelves broke about a year ago. My Minimalist Closet is now sparsely populated by the things I truly love to wear.
Not only was my bedroom cluttered, my life was cluttered. 75 or more unchecked messages and emails, constant dings and pings from one of my 3 mobile devices, relationships I had left unattended for too long, toxic friendships I needed to gently break, poor eating habits, poor sleeping habits, no exercise but I somehow found time for every TV show, self-medicating my discontentment with too much of everything I consumed, and reckless, unsustainable spending habits. Student debt, credit card debt, a car payment that was way out of budget.
I had a breaking point that day, when my door wouldn't open without having to push through all the things, when the pile of stuff fell over, when I noticed the broken shelf and thought of all the other items that sit in varying states of disrepair in my life. That's when the quote came alive to me, "Everything you're carrying, you picked up."
Discontentment? You picked it up
Bad relationships? You picked them up
Poorly-made consumer goods? You picked them up
Broken things? You picked them up
Debt? You picked it up (Don't say, "but I had to go to school," no debt is good debt)
Depression? You may have a medical condition, but it isn't helped by the things you're picking up!
Addictions and bad habits? You can guess what I'm going to say
Everything you're carrying, you picked up. Don't want to carry it anymore? Good. Remember this feeling, remember the weight on your back. Now drop it. That's what I did. I dropped all the clothes I never wore, all the books I never read or read and never read again, all the guitar gear I bought to achieve some status in the "gear-world" as if owning 3 Eventide H9s somehow made me a better guitarist. I dropped it all, sold and donated. Gave away some things to people I knew had a genuine need.
The cool part is, I'm still dropping things. Everyday I find more and more things that stand as trophies to my restless want and relentless consumer-driven mindset. Now, if something doesn't truly add value to my life or bring me joy, I drop it. On a philosophical level, I think this is what Jesus meant when he said (I'm paraphrasing), "Take my weight upon you and learn from me. With me you'll find rest for your soul. For my weight is easy and my burden is light." Rest for your soul.
I'm calling this pursuit simple living and I've been knocking around the term 'Minimalism' but it's not my idea. Minimalism is a movement on the rise, its popular proponents (people I've been reading endlessly over the last few weeks): Joshua Becker, TheMinimalists Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, Colin Wright, Graham Hill, Leo Babauta, and Courtney Carver of Project 333. I'd encourage you to watch the Minimalism doc on Netflix, read essays on Joshua Becker's site, check out Project 333 and LifeEdited.
Simple living is something that anyone, at any level of income, can begin to do. Why? Because it's a mindset. It's not buying more things, it's not buying higher quality things or more simple things, it's not really got anything more to do with things than the dropping of things. Joshua Fields Millburn said, "Letting go is not only freeing, it’s free—no purchase necessary." That's Wednesday Wisdom, "Everything you're carrying, you picked up."
Current reading: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade