Moving is Living: Lessons from "Up in the Air," Part I

Full disclosure up front: "Up in the Air" was my pick for the Best Picture at the Academy Awards tonight. I am aware that it didn't win, but it was my favorite of all the nominated movies that I've seen. (Oh, don't even get me started on "Avatar"...see my other blog for that)

For those who don't know, "Up in the Air" is the story of traveling businessman Ryan Bingham (played brilliantly by George Clooney). Ryan travels all over the US firing people for bosses who don't have the guts to do it themselves. He's happy with his itinerant lifestyle, which affords him considerable freedom, until he meets two women who slowly begin to make him wonder about the true richness that his life offers. I won't give away anything-- just see the movie.

In addition to his job firing people, Ryan brings in money by doing motivational speaking engagements around the country. His main shtick is called, "What's In Your Backpack?" and we see it on several occasions. In the first part, he discusses how much stuff weighs us down, and in the second he discusses how much people weigh us down. In this post and the next one, I'd like to offer my thoughts on what Ryan has to say about these topics.

Here's the first half of his talk:

How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home... I want you to stuff it all into that backpack.

To put it briefly, I think Ryan has a point here with all this talk about the stuff in our lives weighing us down. That's why I started on this whole quest for simplicity. I'd been in college for a couple of years, was aware that my life in two places had accumulated a great deal of stuff, and realized that there was less and less room to store all that stuff when it was in one place. So I started to downsize...slowly at first, a couple of unnecessary objects here, a pair of ripped socks there...then huge projects like my drawers of papers. As I have said before, this process is still ongoing-- downsizing 20 years of your life is something that either gets done in a couple of intense weeks or over time. I've opted for the latter.

What I've noticed as I have gradually simplified and decluttered my room at home, though, is that I have enjoyed being in here a lot more as its gotten more spacious and Zen-like. Not to say that I didn't love being in my room before-- it's always been MY space, which I customize to fit my preferences and manage to simply be myself.

Before I started downsizing, though, I was starting to feel that my space was too crowded for me to enjoy. As Ryan implies, having a lot of stuff weighs you down. So while I do not especially advocate his rather extreme perspective on the matter-- "light it all on fire"-- I can readily verify the idea that decluttering can have the general effect of lightening you: providing a more peaceful atmosphere, loosening the mental stranglehold we have on our possessions, refocusing on the things that really matter most.