There’s an echo in the house. Fur balls bounce through the halls like tumbleweeds, swollen and forgotten. The wind sweeps across the floor, unencumbered by furniture and trinkets as it flies. The sound of a cup hitting the counter top seems loud when your home is vacant. Even the dogs are sensing the looming change. Bowser roams the hallway with a look of confusion on his face. What happened to the bed? Why don’t we have dressers anymore? Who are those strangers that have been coming to our house, and taking our things? We’re preparing to be houseless again.
The emptiness seems to hint at what’s to come, glaring back at us with a laugh. If our home was filled to the brim with things, it’d be impossible for us to make a clean break. But space forges an opportunity. We are free of subscriptions, payments that we make on credit, and items that we purchase and stick in the corner to collect dust day after day. Instead, Tommy, the dogs, and I are tucking our belongings into our cars and hitting the road for an undetermined period of time to encounter who knows what.
Letting Go of Things to be Houseless Again
In order for us to hit the road and live free of attachments, we’ve had to figure out how to fit the essentials into our cars. And basically everything else has been swept into a large donation pile, to be loved by some other human. Buddhism teaches that attachments create suffering. The more we cling to things (things meaning physical things, but also relationships, and ideas), the more likely we are to suffer.
We sold the gear we’re not expecting to need over the next 12 months. Our appliances, and furniture are gone. And now, everything we own can fit into a single 12 by 12 bedroom (or two Subaru vehicles). The process makes me feel both lighter and heavier at the same time.
While I recognize that one must be privileged to be able to pick up their life and journey from place to place at any given time like I do, I also think that there’s a sacrifice that comes with doing this sort of thing. There have been dozens of times over the past few months when I’ve glared longingly at an item, wondering if I could somehow fit it into my glovebox for the duration of our journey, only to add it to the donation pile.
At one point, I even sold a guitar that I found in an antique shop over a decade ago. My heart grew heavy when I handed it over to its next owner – especially when he told me that he threw his last guitar at the wall when his ex broke up with him. But there was an exchange of money, a loss of an item that helped me to create music for a third of my life, and now I can’t stop him from throwing my guitar at the wall if he chooses to do so.
Living Without Strings
But I’ve donated most of my belongings and moved across the country enough times to know that it’s easier to not have strings. If you store pieces of your life in a box in a musty basement, there’s always the attached assumption that you’ll come back. And I don’t always want to go back.
For now, the four of us are counting down our last 16 hours, sweeping an empty house for its future tenants, and starting a new chapter. We think Texas will be our first destination. I’ve never been there. But I know it has climbing, and mountains, and the kinds of things that wake us up from our stupor (like rattlesnakes, cowboys, and undocumented immigrants). We’ll go north when the sun gets a little warmer. The snow-crested peaks and the dust covered roads are calling. And I’m really excited to go home.
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