Boy, have I just re-learned a lesson in possessions.  We just moved out of our house, which is always a daunting task, and what a chore it turned out to be!  And this in spite of the fact that I've spent quite a bit of time over the last few years trying to simplify, trying to get rid of things that no longer (or never even) served a purpose in my life.  It was pretty humbling to see just how far I haven't come in spite of my efforts of the recent past.  I found myself giving away tons of stuff--books, cd's, furniture, tools, dinnerware--that was just sitting around, never being used.  It was almost unbelievable how much we've accumulated despite our efforts not to do so.

But even as I was giving things away, I was thinking about Sartre's words:  We are possessed by the things we possess.  When I like an object, I always give it to someone.  It isn't generosity--it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.  And it kind of scared me--was I doing people a disservice by giving them my stuff?  They wanted it, though--it wasn't as if I was forcing it upon them.  But I knew as I was giving things away that the people who were taking were inadvertently adding to their stockpile of possessions, enslaving themselves just a little bit more.  The term "enslave" may be a bit more dramatic than what I really want to express; perhaps "burden" would be better.  But either way, it was shocking to find just how many things we still had despite our efforts to simplify.  I would have hated to see what a chore emptying the house would have been if we hadn't been trying to get rid of things over the last few years!

Most of the useless stuff that I found were things that I felt would have a use "sometime."  I might have needed it someday, or someone I know might have needed it.  But there it sat in the closet or garage or basement, unneeded and unused.  Now I know that I should have given it away years ago to someone who could have used it, but who knew?  The stationery that I bought because it would make a good gift is now gone, and I never gave it to anyone.  The extra suitcase that I bought because it was very inexpensive and we might need it is now in someone else's closet, never used by us.  There were many tools in my garage that I bought for one task because I thought that if I needed them for a certain task, another one would certainly come up, but none did.

(In all fairness to ourselves, though, I have to keep in mind that much of our "excess" stuff came as the result of us being a blended family--when we got married eight years ago, Terry had three school-age children who have now left home and are living on their own.  Much of the extra stuff we have actually was necessary say three or four years ago.)

What does this actually mean to us, though?  What kinds of lessons, if any, are we learning from our experiences?  First of all, both of us agree that we should simplify our lives significantly as far as material possessions are concerned.  I know that I'm going to be getting rid of things that I don't use and that I may be saving for some time in the future when I might need them.  The very few times in my life when such things actually have come in handy can't make up for having far too much stuff on my hands.

Likewise, I'm not going to buy any more things just because they're nice or they remind me of a certain place.  No more coffee mugs that I won't use or packets of postcards that I won't send or decorative souvenirs that end up in a drawer or in a box in the basement.

This doesn't mean, of course, that we have to live a Spartan lifestyle with absolutely no conveniences, decorations, or nice things in our lives.  We do want to have enough beds for friends and family to be able to visit us wherever we live, and for that, of course, we'll also need sheets and blankets.  We'll need plates and bowls and glasses and silverware, too, but we won't need that extra very nice set that was on display in the hutch in the dining room and that got used possibly three times in the last eight years.  We do need a coffee pot if we want to drink coffee, and we do need a toaster if we want to toast bread and muffins and bagels.

So we'll try to simplify.  We live in a 31-foot motorhome as of a week ago, so my guess is that we're going to learn to simplify through necessity.  And I sincerely believe that we're going to enjoy the process--and benefit greatly from it.  I haven't read a single article or piece of work that extols the virtues of collecting material goods as a way to happiness and contentment, but I've read many about the empowering force of simplifying our lives.  I look forward to doing so. . . .

After more than a week of living in the motorhome, it looks like Terry and I are starting to get used to the very small space as our sole living quarters.  It started raining yesterday afternoon here in Yellowstone, so we spent the time re-arranging and re-organizing, giving ourselves much more free space to move around in and function in.  For the first time since we left, the entire couch was free, and we were able to eat dinner at the "dining room" table.  It isn't that we have so much stuff or that we're space hogs or anything like that--we've been traveling and sight-seeing for the last week, though, and yesterday afternoon gave us our first chance to dedicate ourselves to putting stuff away in a much more final manner.

It's interesting that neither of us view our current situation as a "lack" of space.  In fact, we were discussing it over dinner last night and we agreed that the current amount of space that we have is much more appropriate for two people than the two-story home with a full basement in which we were living before.  Now that there are no kids in the house, it's simply too large for us, and it far surpassed our needs.  I think that in America in particular, we're very much inclined to want our "own" space, and lots of it.  I know of many three- and four-person families that live in homes with 3,000 square feet or more, which very often leads to people growing further apart from each other, and much more isolated from each other than they'd ever be able to grow in smaller quarters.

The people I've known who have had the strongest abilities to get along well with others almost always have come from large families that have lived in what most people would call tight quarters.  They learn their whole lives long to get along with each other, for they have to.  They learn to recognize other people's needs, and to respect other people's space.  This is a generalization, of course, for there are plenty of people who come from such situations who resent the way they grew up, but in my experience the generalization is a valid one.

We both feel that we're becoming more responsible by living in an amount of space that's appropriate for us.  We both want to learn the lessons that this new arrangement will teach us, about ourselves, about each other, and about life.  We don't think that we're in for any sort of Utopian experience, and we know that we will get on each other's nerves at times.  But hopefully those times will be few, and we'll be able to develop techniques with which we can compensate for them.

Speaking of Yellowstone, by the way, we had an experience yesterday that was one of the most extraordinary events of my life.  We went very early to Old Faithful in order to avoid the crowds, and just as the geyser erupted a herd of buffalo made their way into the viewing area from the right.  They paid no mind to us humans, and just moved forward, grazing and doing their buffalo thing.  They actually flanked us, with most of the herd going in front of us, between us and the geyser, and a smaller part of the herd going behind us.  They were there for a good twenty minutes before they left, and they left everyone in the crowd with a truly unique memory of an amazing moment.  It was almost overwhelming to experience the power and the grace and the size of those beautiful, huge animals, especially so closely.

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