If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fear.
Glenn Clark

Remember the scene in Fight Club where he looks around his apartment and it’s all Ikea? All the pretty pictures in the catalogs convince you that life would be as perfect as the pictures if only you could recreate the scene. The movie is about the opposite, but I still probably believed it. My mind returns to this as piece by piece my mini-Ikea dreamworld disappears. Yesterday my Ikea couch disappeared. Today, my Ikea dining table turned office desk was carted away in the back of an SUV. One by one, they disappear…

I spent hours and hours in that Ikea store about five years ago. Debating back and forth on each piece of furniture. What represented me? What was the cheapest but also spoke to me? Ha ha. The crazy part is that I saw the film four years before I carefully weighed my purchases and the irony escaped me until now. Anyway, it evokes such a strange feeling because it’s your stuff that brings comfort and familiarity to a home. And piece by piece, I’m abandoning all of my comfortable, familiar, stuff.

But I aim to travel far and fast, and so I must travel light. It seems since I’ll be taking like 10 total boxes with me (max), I’ve got the traveling materially light thing down. I wasn’t kidding when I said this was Act IV for me (previous post). And in that vain, I am very much attempting to leave all the baggage from acts I-III of my life behind me as well. I do OK on envies, jealousies, and selfishness. You can always do better and so I’ll continue to strive. But on Unforgiveness, and fear? Unforgiveness. I think I can leave behind the grudges, and long-simmering anger. The world needs more forgiveness. And I’ll do my part. Fear. Just me making this move shows I’m starting this new act attacking fear in a big way.

And so hopefully, they disappear, one by one…personal possessions and personal handicaps, one and the same.

5/13/13 – I was so stressed by this first, big, huge move. Freaking out until I got on that place. Just general anxiety. In the end, I traveled light but didn’t shed all those personal handicaps. I’ve since stayed aways from the material trappings, but the personal growth is still a work in progress.