I have a fantasy, man, and it’s not the kind you find stitched into the neon glitz of billboards or rattling the brass-balled dreams of Wall Street brokers, no sir. It’s a quiet little dream, a whisper of a life, a ghost of an idea that rattles around my brain like an old penny in a soup can. I dream of having “nothing”. Nothing but a backpack and a map drawn on the inside of my eyelids. Nothing but the road and the rain and the fresh clean feeling of not owning a damn thing worth stealing.
I dream about backpacking Europe, not like some grubby teenager chasing hostels and wild nights, but slow and sure, the kind of pace where you notice the way the stones in old Roman streets are worn down into the shape of a thousand years of tired feet. I’m not talking about poverty. I’m not talking about desperation. I’m talking about freedom, brother, pure and holy like an open sky with no contrails. Freedom from the endless clanking chains of ownership and responsibility and oh-God-what-if.
Because here’s the thing: I’m a worrier. I was born with worry stitched into my soul like a bad seam. I carry the weight of imaginary disasters in my pockets like old receipts. My motto — and I repeat it to myself like a prayer when the midnight demons come knocking — is “Be proactive, not reactive.” And you know, it’s a good motto, a strong motto, except when it turns into a goddamn ball and chain. Except when it makes you live life like you’re preparing for a hurricane that never comes.
Man, I’ve spent twenty-five years stockpiling for the end of the world. Canned goods and water purifiers and camping gear and propane — oh, so much propane — like I’m expecting to wake up one day in a Mad Max sequel. And every time I added another thing to the pile, every time I built another fortress wall of Stuff, I thought I was building safety. But what I was really building was a prison.
Because here’s the crazy thing I’ve figured out, brother, after too many nights counting the cracks in my own ceiling: the more you have, the more you have to lose. Every possession is a little liability, a little anchor wrapped in bubble wrap and good intentions. You think you’re protecting yourself, but really, you’re just weighing yourself down until you can’t even get your feet off the ground. You’re carrying your own cage on your back like a goddamn snail.
And so, in the quiet hours, when the world stops spinning quite so loud, I dream about leaving it all behind. About slinging a battered old backpack over my shoulder and just going. About being small again in a big world, a little flame flickering against the vast dark.
But then reality taps me on the shoulder, smiling that sad old smile. Because let’s be honest: I’m not twenty years old anymore. My knees crack when I get out of bed, and I need reading glasses to see the menu at restaurants. Extreme minimalism sounds great in theory, but maybe not so much when you’ve got a few decades of wear-and-tear on your soul and your spine.
Still. Still. Maybe there’s something in between, something like “token extreme minimalism.” Maybe it’s not about living like a monk in the Himalayas or a vagabond on the Rue Mouffetard. Maybe it’s about the ritual, the holy rite, of letting go. Of looking every object in your cluttered little kingdom in the eye and saying, “Do I own you, or do you own me?”
Maybe we don’t need five raincoats and a gas mask and twelve different types of paracord. Maybe we don’t need the broken coffee maker, or the second blender, or the mountain of T-shirts from marathons we didn’t even run. Maybe what we need, really, is to feel the fear of letting go, and do it anyway.
Because here’s the twist in the tale, the joker hiding in the deck: the stuff we think keeps us safe might be the very thing making us feel unsafe. It’s the constant reminder that disaster is just around the corner. It’s the echo of a thousand anxieties whispering from closets and basements and storage units. It’s not the world that’s heavy, man — it’s our grip on it.
So I’m setting out, slow and steady, like an old hobo hopping freight trains in dreams. I’m not going to empty the house overnight. I’m not going to burn it all down in some great bonfire of rebirth. But I’m going to start peeling away the layers, like bark from an old tree, until I can feel the soft green wood underneath. I’m going to lighten my load, inch by blessed inch, and see what it feels like to float again.
I’ll let you know how it goes. Maybe you’ll join me, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. The road’s wide enough for all of us, and it’ll still be there tomorrow, humming under the stars.
Join us in making the world a better place – you’ll be glad that you did. Cheers friends.