Collect Experiences, Not Things

[Greg Mihalik]

Buried in Abundance Without Attachment is this gem –

"First, collect experiences, not things."

"Material things appear to be permanent, while experiences seem evanescent and likely to be forgotten. Should you take a second honeymoon with your spouse, or get a new couch? The week away sounds great, but hey — the couch is something you’ll have forever, right?"

"Wrong. Thirty years from now, when you are sitting in rocking chairs on the porch, you’ll remember your second honeymoon in great detail. But are you likely to say to one another, “Remember that awesome couch?” Of course not. It will be gone and forgotten. Though it seems counterintuitive, it is physically permanent stuff that evaporates from our minds. It is memories in the ether of our consciousness that last a lifetime, there for us to enjoy again and again."

Gear is good.
Going is better.

[Bruce Tolley]

Thanks Greg

I had been reading the NY Times oped article earlier this AM with my morning coffee.

Great advice.

[Paul Magnanti]

How appropriate as I get ready for a holiday party…

Funny, I can remember very vividly those wonderful Christmas Eve dinners Grandma used to make. I can still picture sitting around her kitchen table. My grandfather in his customary spot (He always cleared the table and the dishes after the meal)

It is cold and wet outside in the chill of a southern New England winter.

But inside?

The table is full of seven types of seafood. It has been almost twenty-five years since my grandmother cooked that traditional Christmas Eve meal..but I still can taste almost every morsel. I know after this meal there would be chestnuts, torrone and homemade "panforte" and many other baked goods done from memory and no recipes.

…and I could not tell you one wrapped gift my grandparents gave us.

Memories are what our grandparents gave us in abundance.

[Valerie E]

Great reminder of what I've already found to be true — thanks! Time to start planning another trip, methinks…

[Tipi Walter]

Then again, even our memories are lost if we get dementia etc. And really, the body is just another piece of gear, including with it the mind and our memories. I carry a pack and a tent and need my legs and require functioning lungs and a brain to make sense of it all but all these are temporary pieces of "gear" and soon dumped at death.

Everybody talks about the shallowness of materialism but who is willing to forego a simple element like oxygen?

[HkNewman]

Love the swami in India by way of Texas in the linked oped. …,Dude. Insightful but of course a Cartier jeweler ad pop-up via the NYT hit as I was reading.

Ed: tense

[Barry Cuthbert]

"Gear is good.
Going is better."

Nice pithy summary.

[Tipi Walter]

I like this one—
"Travel in all the four quarters of the earth, yet you will find nothing anywhere. What ever there is, is only here." RAMAKRISHNA.

[Katherine .]

Nice piece. I remember reading about the original couch v. travel happiness study. (and have had the same couch since then!)

It's a bit akin to skills mattering as much as gear.

I was interested to see who wrote it. President of AEI (right-leaning think tank) was not who I would have necessarily guessed. I like being surprised in that sort of way.

[Billy Ray]

Yepers… here I lay on my very comfy 40 year old couch… god this spot on the couch… I'd purr if I could…
and to tell you the truth, I can't remember much about the trips I did 20 years ago…
But I sure do love this soft couch…

Collecting experiences is pretty much the same as collecting things:
The act of collecting is putting your consciousness into something external.
The most important thing is 'being'… not being on a couch or being on a trip/experience… 'being'

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mindfulness-anderson-cooper-60-minutes/

Billy

[Bob Moulder]

Billy, I watched that segment last night.

While I applaud 60 Minutes for providing a venue for Jon Kabat-Zinn and the "being" philosophy, I found Cooper's interviewing "style" to be very annoying. There were several instances where he cut off his subject mid-sentence as if to say "Hurry up and get to the point, and if you can't do it I'll do it for you," and a few times when it was clear that Cooper was impatiently itching to relate his personal experience (self-identify) rather than absorb what his subject was saying.

I understand that by the standards of "tv time" these segments are very brief and must keep moving along, but it is interesting that with all the hours of footage they had to edit they were unable to make it look as if Cooper wasn't some sort of self-absorbed Gen-X prick. I guess one could argue that he was a really good candidate to introduce to the philosophy.

However, you make a great point that the objective of "collecting" experiences might in some way detract from the experiences themselves. But at least "experience collectors" are getting out and doing stuff.

That was a really cool comment at the end of the article about the spicy soup and the context in which it was made.

[W I S N E R !]

Let's not ruin a good philosophy by getting bogged down arguing the semantics of "collecting" experiences. The point is simply to get out and live and it's a very worthy one.

[Bob Moulder]

Can't argue with that.

I have no problem whatsoever with beak bagging, fastest known time (supported, unsupported, whatever), first ascents, etc.

As I said, at least they're getting out there and doing stuff.

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