I’m putting in time this weekend. My wife is a delegate to the 215th Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, and I tagged along. It’s been my kind of day. I have gone for walks, eaten out, played on the computer, and otherwise roamed around the conference center and hotel. 

I’m not sure why I’ve enjoyed it so much, but I’ve known for some time that this would be something fun for me. Most obvious is the fact that I don’t often get time to myself, when I can just hang out, doing things that I enjoy. I brought a small amount of things to use while I was here (computer, iPad, a few books). I like to explore, and so I have put in a good amount of time wandering through the halls, looking at what’s available to do, visiting the vending machine, and the like. The World Cup began a few days ago, so I had a few games on yesterday, playing on the two TVs in our room, just because I could. This morning I took a drive, got a haircut, walked around near a lake, and snuck some lunch from the conference that I’m not attending.

Which brings me to an interesting point, one that I’ve considered for many years. I pondered, some time ago, what it is that makes people so excited about vacations, aside from the adventure of discovery of new places? Why is it that people can end up so very happy repeating vacations to the same locations year after year (I come from a family whose only vacations were the same few campgrounds every summer growing up, and the same few timeshare properties (with three additional weeks added in recent years)).

The answer comes down to “stuff”. When you go on vacation, you bring only the things that you need for that night, weekend, or week. People, like my father-in-law, are capable of vacationing for full seasons of the year with only a suitcase or two. Isn’t it marvelous to think that all the “important” “necessities” could fit inside the hatch of a Smart car? Then, what is all that stuff that fills our closets, and cabinets, and is left in the open at our homes? Do we actually need it? And why do we all strive for more of it?

Many people argue that we don’t need it, and I struggle everyday with decisions about what physical things are necessary and which could be brought to Goodwill, recycled, or tossed altogether. It’s not an easy battle.

But, one thing that I do know is that when on vacation, options are limited. This is something that I enjoy immensely. I have a hard time with decision fatigue. It’s difficult for me to choose an entree from a menu that’s too large, and it’s equally hard for me to figure out what to do on an evening at home. There are so many options always on the table, from what to eat, what to play, what to watch, and so on. But on vacation, these options are severely limited. Yesterday, for instance, I could stay in and play with the computer, and watch a World Cup game. It wasn’t too hard to decide, because my options were so small. At one point I walked around the property, played with a few ducks, took a stroll to McDonald’s and, unlike at home, I wasn’t preoccupied the entire time wondering what to do next. I enjoyed the fact that I didn’t have a lot of other temptations. At home, there are simply too many options, simply too much stuff.

Growing up, I looked forward to seeing the special issue of my mom’s Better Homes & Gardens or Good Housekeeping that would feature novel bedrooms for kids. I think they gave out awards, or something. We’d stare at those awesome rooms modeled after spaceships, the Old West, whatever, and the thing that always perplexed us was “Where is all their junk?” Not even “stuff”, we wondered where the “junk” was. A dramatic statement from a  child, given that in so few words, it reveals to me now that we had a ton of belongings, that we didn’t value them highly, and that we realized that there was too much of it, and we didn’t know how to attack the problem.

That realization sticks with me and my wife today, as we perennially wonder whether we should get rid of possessions, while we are bombarded with invitations by society and culture to acquire even more. Just yesterday, she was talking to me about the joy in watching a documentary depicting individuals who have stripped their lives down to the bare essentials, and moved into small homes, many as small as 600 square feet. She loved the movie, but I bet we couldn’t do it.

What do we actually need? I think we are heading toward a time when there are fewer and fewer physical items required to do all that we’ve ever done, and far more, too. I relish this thought, and try to get the most out of my tech gadgets, so that I don’t go down the slippery slope of amassing more and more, just because the latest one just came out. I’m writing this message on a four year old laptop, which goes slower than my friends’, but it does pretty much everything I need it to. I live by my iPad, now two generations older than most owners’, but I’m still scratching the surface on ways to get my entire life accessible on it. And both these devices look nearly brand-new. In a few minutes I could scrub them both down, and get near-mint resell value. I’m proud of the things I have, and try to take care of them, so that I don’t need to keep replacing them.

I watch students roll onto campus nowadays, and think that their backpack, with its laptop and iPad can do as much for them (and far more) as the following did for me when I headed off to school in the late ’90s: TV, two VCRs, two large boxes of compact discs, a large box of VHS tapes, one or two video game systems and their associated game media, and a large pile of reference books.

What a blessing to live in a time where, if we choose it to be so, we can live more comfortably than ever before, but with fewer things to clutter our homes and our minds. As I struggle to give up those things that I have collected since childhood, my dream is for a time when, even outside the freeing confines of a suitcase, I may willfully choose to chase a duck.