A
little personal history to start this piece. Six years ago I had a
seizure; basically I stopped breathing for about two minutes and was
in a world of pain for the following six months. Two and a half years
ago I had a heart attack which came, more or less, out of the blue.
At the time my blood pressure was 120/80, my pulse around 60 beats
per minute and my cholesterol reading a very low 3.2. All good
readings it would seem but I still had the coronary incident. The old
cliché 'you never know' is horribly true in these things.
Such
incidents are marvellous, if you survive relatively intact, for
focussing the mind and making you realise what does and does not
matter to you. One would think that such a realisation would come
easily and naturally but the reality is that most of us, most of the
time, buy into dreams sold to us through advertising and the media or
simply go along with our societies expectations of who and how we
should be.
At
the time I owned a house, a car and much stuff. I say 'owned' because
that is the way we tend to refer to such arrangements but in many
ways it could equally well be said that these things 'owned' me. Much
of my time and money was spent in looking after this detritus. Cars
need to be maintained, fed and serviced, houses needed the provision
of electricity, gas, water and general cleaning. Every now and then
something would go wrong – a leaky pipe at one stage, a domestic
appliance needing replacement at another. On top of all this one was
obliged to pay various taxes to 'own' these things.
When
I eventually sold up just over a year ago the idea was to move into
another house in a pleasanter part of the country, hoping to breathe
fresher air, explore new horizons, all that sort of thing. Indeed,
for a time, I went down this path. I travelled to the town of
Glastonbury in Somerset on several occasions and made various offers
on properties which, fortunately, were completely unsuccessful.
At
this stage I thought I would take a holiday, a few weeks away would
seem like a pleasant distraction from worrying about owning property.
I chose Thailand for my destination. At the time, it was the furthest
East I had ever travelled so the journey was undertaken with a
certain degree of trepidation. I travelled on my own although I did
meet a friend for a few days whilst out there. I found that after a
initial feeling of disorientation I began to enjoy the experience
very much. In fact, the longer it went on the more I enjoyed it.
On
returning to England I found the place to be cold, wet and generally
pretty dowdy. Because I had sold the house I had enough money in the
bank to consider another trip. In fact, I began to realise, that I
had enough money to consider several other trips. One of the odd
things I had noticed whilst living in Thailand is that you really
didn't need anything like as much money to live as you do in the UK.
This is especially the case if, like me, you do not smoke, scarcely
drink and enjoy good food but not pretentious restaurants. It was
slowly dawning on me that another lifestyle altogether was possible.
A lifestyle where one is not tied to one's possessions, to place or
society. Although it had seemed that I was more or less obliged to
buy a new house and 'settle down' in another location, the notion
that this was not necessarily so was slowly forming in my mind. It
was like awakening from a dream.
I
planned my next trip. I wanted to make it more adventurous and even
further flung. I had, for several years, intended to visit a close
friend in China but health and other issues, some of which stemmed
from house owning, had always thwarted me until now. I remember
reading a line from a book around this time:" If not now, then
when?" I decided to take the plunge and booked a flight that
would allow me to spend three months away.
The
flight was expensive, as were the visa and the insurance but, oddly,
after three months away spending only a few pounds a day on
accommodation and food (and even including some fascinating internal
journeys to Shanghai, Hangzhou and the garden city of Suzhou) I came
back to find that, in real terms, I was actually a little better off
than when I left! This was quite a revelation. When one does not have
to pay the myriad expenses of house owning it is curious just how
much further one's cash goes. I did still have a car at the time and
there were ongoing expenses in connection with this so it could have
been even better if these also were no longer part of the equation.
We
live at a time and in societies that value 'stuff'. Lots and lots of
stuff. Stuff that you buy but need to replace a year later because
new stuff has superseded the old stuff. Stuff you need to buy because
other people have got this stuff. Stuff you buy that is used for a
few days and then sits idly buy cluttering up your house until you
retire it to the shed or the loft. Stuff, stuff and more stuff.
Robb
Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution, put this rather succinctly:
“Ok,
here it is: Having more shit (cars, TVs, houses, shoes... you know,
crap) does not make you happier. In fact, it makes you unhappy
and whittles away your life and causes you stress.”
By
now, I was re-evaluating so many assumptions that I had previously
lived by. I say assumptions somewhat ill-advisedly. Really, these
things are just taken on from the people around you, from the
expectations built into us and, to some extent, from advertising. So
much of this was seeming quite false and hollow by this stage.
I
began to realise that the life of the nomadic flaneur was well suited
to one such as myself. It is not a lifestyle that would suit
everyone. In fact, it is not a lifestyle that would suit that many.
But it is a choice. It is not a default setting that is one has gone
along with because one never questioned the assumptions that it was
based on. It may not be right for you but there will be other
choices, other ways of being. It is your life and there is a big old
world out there. Why tie yourself down to one tiny patch of it?
Instead
of owning houses, cars, washing machines, iphones, whatever...own
your life!
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