Everything I Own
Our Version of “The Things They Carried”
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I thought this would happen when I was writing last week, a similarly inadequate attempt just to maintain my publish streak. I thought that I might fail to write what I wanted to write. And I was right.
This week, I packed everything I own into a 26’ truck. Everything my wife owns. Everything my children own. Our entire worldly representation into a metal box. To drive it to a new house.
So, this week, I’m left with reflecting on what all of those things mean. And don’t get me wrong, I’m no ascetic. I’m not here to say physical possessions don’t matter. My family and I have a lot of things we cherish. Instead, my reflection is on what else we carry.
Looking at the physical representations of my life had my harkening back to a book I read in high school about soldiers in Vietnam called “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. I remember being struck with how a story about physical possessions was used to frame realities of emotional possessions.
And when I think about the territory my writing most often takes me to, I immediately settle on biases. We carry mental models that shape our worldview and inform why we believe what we believe.
In the same way that I rarely take stock of the things I physically own (I had no idea if I really needed a 26’ truck, or if that would actually be enough space at all), I also rarely take an inventory of the underlying things that inform my thinking.
That has been a deliberate effort on my part over the last year or so. I measure success based on how often I say: “I think X. That’s probably because Y. Now I need to evaluate whether Y is really true or not.” The more we do that, the more we understand what we actually “carry.”
Anyways. I’ve got a big truck to move around. Until next week!
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Have a safe move!
I wrote about this here in my Dirge for Detritus:
"All that stuff used to be money.
All that money used to be time.
All that time used to be opportunity.
All that opportunity used to be energy.
All that energy used to be potential.
All that potential used to be dreams.
All those dreams used to be yours."
Now, they’ve come down from the clouds and turned into clutter."
https://www.whitenoise.email/p/a-dirge-for-detritus