When I was in second grade, I won a cup in a school-wide reading challenge. It was inexplicably shaped like a beer stein, and was of a clear plastic and had my school’s logo on it (our mascots were dragons–so cool, right?). This became MY cup and I exclusively used it for everything. I think it got pretty disgusting and became more and more opaque as the years went by, but I didn’t care.
Also while growing up, I latched onto a certain spoon. It was the only spoon from my parents’ first silverware set in the US that survived for more than a few years, and it had a red plastic handle, which is how I could differentiate it from other spoons. Similar to my cup, I used it for all spoon-related consumption, and if it was dirty, I would sigh and use some other inferior spoon with great reluctance.
One day, I came home from school and could not find my cup. I searched and searched, and finally, when my parents came home from work, I asked them if they had seen it. “Oh, we threw it out,” they said. “It was too dirty.” The same thing happened with my beloved red spoon on another sad day, but this time they told me it broke.
Ah, the lack of sentimentality in immigrant parents–they knew that these pieces of admittedly cheap kitchenware were sacred to me, but still, into the trash they went without even allowing me to bid them goodbye while shedding a few heartfelt tears. They were just gone, poof, never to be seen again, and I was expected to carry on as if dear friends had not just been dumped without any respect.
Childhood tragedy aside, the point I’m trying to make is that I get a little attached to material things. However, when you’re traveling with a small backpack, you just don’t get to have a lot of things. There becomes this push-pull of cherishing all of your belongings and not wanting to let them go, and also getting really sick of them. Must I wear this ragged t-shirt again? But if I lost it, what a pain to try and find another one without knowing where the good shops are, to have to pay for something unnecessary, to not know where I will be for it to be delivered.
Thus the lack of souvenirs from our trip. We bought very few things as we traveled and if we did, it was mostly to replace something that we had to throw out. The backpack space cost of my bespoke shirt from Hoi An was a shirt that I hadn’t worn much on our travels and was also eight years’ old; this was left in Da Lat. I had brought a $20 puffy jacket from Costco to Asia specifically so I could leave it guilt-free once I was sure I wouldn’t need it anymore; our Airbnb host in Saigon was puzzled but not unhappy about the unexpected “gift.”
This restriction on consumption is something that Craig and I have talked about in regard to a travel sabbatical versus a stay-at-home sabbatical. In terms of accommodation, we spent much less for a year and a half than we would have if we had stayed in Seattle; even if we added in transportation costs of all of our flights and trains, this amount would only be half of what our condo costs us in 18 months of mortgage, interest, HOA, taxes, and insurance. So globe-trotting was quite inexpensive in comparison to just renting or owning a place in Seattle. Of course if all of our time had been spent in Europe or if we hadn’t benefited from the generosity of free lodging from parents and friends, this would be a different story…
I have so far established that just staying in Seattle and not going anywhere would have cost more than traveling abroad the way we did. Food was, on average, a lot cheaper in the places we traveled to; even in Europe I wouldn’t say it was more expensive than Seattle. So I think we can safely say that the cost of feeding ourselves was also significantly lower than if we had stayed in Seattle.
On top of all of that, we had either a cargo limit on our eWellie (Honda Element) or a space restriction in our backpacks that prevented us from buying stuff. We still bought quite a lot of stuff that was specific to our travels, like a nice pair of shorts for Asia, that Costco puffy jacket I mentioned, etc., but I would say overall that our consumerism plummeted during the sabbatical. Not having a space of our own meant we didn’t have anywhere to put the things we purchased; the end result being that we didn’t really purchase much.
Now that we’re back in Seattle and consuming at normal pace once again, it has struck us that if we had taken time off from work but hadn’t had any restrictions on obtaining more and more goods, our 18 months would have been two or three times more expensive than what we actually did. So much of our everyday life is taken up with material goods; coveting them, earning money to buy them, using them, and then discarding them. Not being able to do any of this made me sad at times (I am just as materialistic as the next person!), but I think it allowed us to turn our thoughts to intangibles.
What is life without all of these things and a place to put them in? Sometimes it was difficult. There were innumerous shiny and cute things that I could have bought at various points in our travels, but considering that I hardly remember any of these things, the pang of regret in passing them by was short-lived. On the whole, out of all of the inconveniences of travel, this lack of goods and the purchase of them was the least arduous to endure. I think I also learned how to really enjoy window-shopping; appreciating items and then letting them go.
Since childhood, my nature has been to hold onto favorite objects because they can bring joy and comfort. After living with just what can fit in a 40-liter backpack, I think I’ve learned that I don’t have to own things in order to feel this joy and comfort. Perhaps it’s part of the move towards the tenets of mindfulness and Buddhism that I’ve started to make; recognizing the impermanence of objects and the feelings that they produce.
Still, I’m not a Buddhist monk, and there are lots of things that I will continue to buy, especially in this period of settling in, back here in Seattle. Like with all of the tiny self-improvements and growth that I think I’ve achieved during our time off, I am hoping that this will also stay with me. It’s a little bit scary, wading back into the land of rampant capitalism and online shopping; it’s so easy to just buy, buy, buy. Without so many things during the past year and a half, I’ve found a lot of freedom and peace in a life without constant consumption, and I’m worried of losing that. In the same way I clung to that spoon and cup, we shall see if I can cling onto the mindset of needing and wanting very little despite being back on the hamster wheel of a working American’s life.
The Wongenbergs 