Traveling Light: On the Road and in Life

Greetings fellow travelers. As I write this I’m sitting in a pub in the Toronto airport waiting to catch a flight to Winnipeg. I have a backpack and a very small carry-on suitcase with me. Just enough to get me through the last couple of days. I’ve learned through many travels and even better, through backpacking, how to travel light–very light. When you’re hiking up a mountain or visiting two cites in 48 hours, you just don’t need a bunch of stuff.

It’s amazing how minimalist you can become you you’re forced to carry on your back or pay $25 for whatever you want to bring along. And given that I’m cheap and old, carrying extra baggage has no appeal to me.

Oh that we could have such a mindset toward life. We are travelers here. This world is not our home. The time we spend here compared to eternity isn’t even a blip on the radar. And yet, we accumulate stuff like our lives depend on it. We act as it stuff defines us, increases our value, loves us and give us life. We insure our stuff, rent storage facilities for our stuff, and even work to get more of it.

So much for traveling light. We’re more like the kings of old who couldn’t go anywhere without an entourage of slaves and mules just to carry all their stuff.

Question: is all this really necessary? Is all this helpful? I just talked to a friend who recently moved onto a dream house with his wife, and yet his marriage is dying. They’ve got the right house on the right street in the right part of town, and they still can’t get along. So tell me again why we’re carrying all this junk around with us?

So here’s a challenge, and I’m very serious about this–limit your life to 100 items. From your bed to your car to your purse, you get to have only 100 things. That’s it! Work on that list, figure out your 100 things, and you’ll be well on your way to realizing just how much you don’t need in your life.

When I backpack, I’ve got 80 cubic centimeters to work with, and that’s a big pack. Anything else is just too much. Apply that to your life. If it can’t fit in a pack, you don’t really need it.

Don’t be consumed by the monster of more. It’s not worth it.

For more info about the 100 item rule, click here.