The Simple Way Always Wins

On creating boundaries and defining yourself through your favorite objects

Malibu at sunset, my weekend hangout. Photo by Andre Frueh on Unsplash.

Lenny Kravitz’s favorite dwelling is an Airstream located in the Bahamian isle of Eleuthera. Despite his enormous financial success he finds solace in smaller spaces and prefer simple living.

“You feel really free in there cause you know where your boundaries are.” – Lenny Kravitz

Freedom through clear physical boundaries. A few simple things (a guitar, his Leica, the beach…) and life is suddenly opened to new possibilities to live and create.

We buy a house as we are told it’s a good investment in the long-term. Then we furnish and decorate, dive deeper, and deeper into the abyss of sedentary living, forgetting that there is a whole bright world outside ready to be found and explored.

One thing follows the other and we are suddenly busy with domestic chores and moving stuff we never really wanted but works well with that other thing we never really wanted and so it goes until we are neck deep in clutter and cannot breathe.

What if we did the opposite, just picked five things that really mattered to us to live, work, create, and love anywhere. Things that have become a part of us, a true extension of our creativity and personality. What would these things be?

I’d pick my Leica camera, surfboard, shorts, MacBook, and SnowPeak camping stove (to make coffee or Indian curry anywhere). Sure, I’d need a few more things but these would be the core in fulfilling my passions, the center. The rest will naturally follow.

Instead of decorating the outside, it’s about growing the inside-out, creating clear boundaries for more personal freedom to live, create, explore, learn, exercise, and love. Everything else are just dead trees and fossil fuels, repackaged into desirable objects.

What I love about my favorite objects is that they can all easily join me on road trips and travels. As a matter of fact, I now keep them in the car to always be able to do what I love wherever I am, packed and ready to go. It’s a wonderful sense of freedom.

I think people confuse “having it all” with freedom. Having it all leads to the opposite, to more clutter and less freedom. It’s when you subtract all the obvious, what we are supposed to have, that the meaningful can really shine. Like Lenny Kravitz’s lyrics.

PS. Road tripping this weekend, testing summer gear to learn if my thinking and past experiences is getting it right. Working great so far but there is always room for improvements.