“Your life is so much more than what you own.”
Real life is overrated
One thing I learned on while hiking the Appalachian Trail was how liberating it is to have so few “real life” things to worry about.
Minimalism is entirely underrated.
Life on the trail means leaving behind the trappings of "real life," the things we think we need in order to be happy. Little things, like flush toilets and subscription underwear deliveries. And big things...things that require us to pay rent on storage facilities or to be indentured servants to our monthly bills.
The trappings of "real life" are called trappings for a reason! Because they trap us in lives that don’t nurture or nourish us and don't allow us the freedom to find out what really matters to us.
Living on less than $1,000 a month with just a tent, a sleeping bag, one change of clothes, some extra toe socks, one gadget (my phone), a notebook, a pen, a set of watercolors, a sack full of pasta sides and the occasional meal out in town taught me how overrated the trappings are.
There’s so little we actually need and I learned on the trail that my personal fulfillment and happiness are inversely proportional to the stuff I fill my life with.
The intangible things, like relationships and creativity, explode in technicolor and expand in richness when the material trappings are cleared out and relegated to their proper, insignificant placed.