Foregoing possessions

This weekend I found out my step-brother-in-common-law (boy do I have a confusing family) is selling the vast majority of his possessions in order to be more free to travel and move around and so on, as well as raising some always helpful funds.

Led to a lot of interesting WTFs and discussions around the kitchen table. Myself, I'm very impressed and really support the idea. It really does make sense to me as at the moment he's being very adventurous doing things like teaching English in South Korea, a visit to Iran next on the list, who knows what will follow! Freeing yourself from possessions really does open up your options for doing things like long-term travelling and working with organisations abroad.

Obviously some people have concerns about later regretting giving up all this stuff, but we're not talking family heirlooms here, it's stuff like DVDs & games and consoles and stuff that have been well used and mostly outgrown.

Personally I think it's very important to have a certain level of detachment from the things you own. Collecting something for collections sake doesn't seem healthy to me, you ascribe too much more value to something that's effectively valueless in the bigger picture. I used to spend a fortune on "special edition" anime box sets, trying to build a "collection", until I came to the conclusion that all that was special about them is they were helping earn some publishing executive their next boat.

I do still have a sizable collection of DVDs & comics & games, but the reason I keep this collection is to share it with other people. I lend my stuff out as much as possible to share the experiences these things have given me, and would rather something was seen / read / played once again and have it ruined than for it sit on a shelf forever unused. I've seen the extreme opposite of this, with my girlfriend reading a book lent to her by a collector friend, whilst constantly fearful she bend the spine. It made me worry about the lenders state of mind!

So stuff is good! Own stuff! But don't let it own you...