Incheon, Korea
Check out the featured image for this post.
I captured my physical possessions here in Korea.
I own a carryon and backpack. Include clothes for 1 week, a laptop, phone and shoes.
I travel with a carryon and backpack filled with those scant physical possessions because this is what I own.
What you see is the entirety of stuff I own so what you see is what I travel with around the globe.
Being a minimalist traveler taught me one clear lesson:
traveling with as little as possible strengthens the idea of who you really are and weakens the idea of who you are not.
Who You Really Are
You and I are eternal mind in reality.
We need nothing because mind is abstract.
Does a mind need to travel with 5 pairs of shoes?
Nope.
Mind does not need a single pair of shoes.
But as long as we believe that we are bodies it makes sense to travel with one pair of casual sneakers. Toss in one pair of flip flops for travelers to the tropics.
You are truthfully beyond this world but inhabit it for a little bit. Being in the world temporarily inspires one to be minimally practical. Being minimally practical means taking what you need not what you want.
People profess to needing a full suitcase to travel with a full wardrobe but that is not true. People want to travel with a suitcase and full wardrobe because a false sense of safety, security, identity and comfort comes with the overstuffed suitcase in the egoic mind.
What you want is security. But clothes give you no security. What you want is to identify with cloth placed on the body. But eternal mind cannot be identified with a fancy jacket. What you want is to have all of the things that appear to make you feel comfortable, safe and assured. But no thing in the world can meet these ends because comfort, safety and assurance comes only from your mind as you realize who you really are.
Being a traveling minimalist forces you to realize:
“I’m not all the stuff-things-items I believed who I was! Nor does my security, comfort, safety, assurance and identify originate in socks, jackets, blouses, shorts, T-shirts, fungal cream, 3 pairs of sun glasses, dress clothes to go out to eat once every 3 months or any other illusion that I mistakenly believed was me or would prepare me, or would keep me safe, secure and happy.”
Who you really are is eternally prepared for everything.
Who you really are knows that no matter what happens, you can easily access what you temporarily need in that moment wherever you happen to be in the world.
Traveling with 1 week’s change of clothes and doing laundry at week’s end keeps me within the bounds of a country’s decency laws. Traveling with a few T-shirts and shorts makes carryon travel easy peasy.
I stow a laptop in my backpack because I blog professionally.
My phone and wallet sit in my pockets. My phone is a business aid. My wallet continues the prime means of exchange in the world.
What else could I want?
What I need travels with me in a carryon and backpack.
Being a traveling minimalist is easy when you begin to realize who you really area.
Being a travel minimalist is even easier when you begin to realize who you are not.
Who You Are Not
When I began circling the globe 12 years ago my 3 foot tall mammoth-sized suitcase burst at the seams in Cambodia.
One bus assistant unloading the tiny house semi-dropped it as he engaged in the Herculean task of handing it to me from the luggage hold.
I instantly realized: what the hell was I doing?Â
Did I want to travel? Or did I want to take my home with me?
I gradually evolved through smaller iterations of suitcases until going full time carryon for my international trip to Panama in 2021.
I never looked back.
You are not what you travel with; nor does your safety, security and survival depend on carrying stuff with you around the globe. You can buy most if not all of that stuff anywhere if you genuinely need it. But if you cannot buy it you simply do not need it. You may want it. You may believe it gives you something that you need but it is just an egoic desire to let go, to release, to wrestle your identity from things, stuff and items that are non-essentials.
Beware of Forced Minimalism as a Solution
The world loves hopping on to popular trends.
Years before the term “digital nomad” became chic in the mainstream, I was a digital nomad without knowing about the term.
I spent years in Chiang Mai before the digital nomad masses traveled there based on a few mainstream news articles. I do not fault this crowd. I admire ’em for taking the plunge.
But I also know that forced digital nomadism as an escape never leads to freedom. Doing something mainly to copy a popular trend binds you versus freeing you because following the ego and not your heart leads to a world of trouble.
Ditto for the minimalist movement.
Imagine if you currently based much of your identity, safety and security on owning many things within a house. Your reality, your existence and your life may temporarily appear to hinge on all of those things in that home.
What happens if you rashly sell your home and stuff to circle the globe because others seem to do it with great happiness and freedom?
That hurried quantum leap creates an absolute nightmare. Utter identity loss, the terror of forgiving all of your false idols at once and the blanket anxiety of feeling naked, exposed and insecure because you own a carryon, laptop, backpack and 1 week’s change of clothes all feel completely overwhelming.
Take baby steps, folks. Slow and steady change works best for long term shifts.
Trust your intuition. Perhaps now is not the time to sell everything and circle the globe because you aren’t mentally prepared for this life.
Maybe your heart guides you to conduct a yard sale to rid yourself of genuinely worthless trinkets, in order to prove their worthlessness, to inspire a cathartic purge and to assure you of who you are…..and more importantly, who you are not.
Listen to your gut hunches to be guided in the proper direction from love.
Conclusion
Being a traveling minimalist is freedom.
This life does not feel freeing as some fleeting state.
It is freedom.
You are, literally, almost completely unbound to:
- any thing
- any schedule
- any place
- any time
- anyone
I can assure you that these experiences are not hell but quite heavenly, for most of the time.
Most never understand the torture that attachment to things causes and the bliss that detachment from things promotes.
But knowing why you want freedom and how prepared you are to take the plunge are the first two steps toward being a traveling minimalist.
Spend time in quiet to answer these questions before selling the farm and hitting the road.
