A few weeks ago, as I was driving on the highway, I had this strangely strong feeling that my apartment was going to burn down. I'm not sure why the thought entered into my mind, my apartment was still there when I got back, yet it did get me thinking. Which of my things do I have with me in my car? What is in my apartment that I would be upset to lose the most? I started thinking of individual items: my camera & photographs mostly, hard-drive of music, a dress I really like, letters from people I treasure, my favorite necklace. In discussing the thought later, I realized it is a pretty good exercise in a few things. First of all, every physical thing that I own is temporary. It can burn in a fire, be washed away in a flood, be lost or stolen. This is easy to say but hard to fully grasp. Our nature is to get attached to things, advertisements constantly yell at us that we need more stuff, we compare what we have to what someone else has, and we truly exist in a culture of want.
I am now trying to place this thought as a challenge to myself: to be more conscious of the futility of stuff and to value simplicity. This then leads to changing my perspective on things I need or want. For example, if I begin to see the reality of my house burning down in the near future, I inevitably want to not have that much stuff. I want to have as few things as possible so that what I lose will be minimal and it wouldn't be a big deal for those things to be gone. I know this is hard; very hard, actually. However, I am trying to think of this often so that I will not purchase unnecessary things as much, and begin to increasingly value simplicity. Its not easy, but I've been trying to really think about it more consciously, and let it change the way I think about things.
With this in mind, I was delighted to come across "The Burning House Blog" (via everynothingwonderful), a site developed around this idea exactly. They ask: "If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It's a conflict between what's practical, valuable and sentimental. What you would take reflects your interests, background and priorities. Think of it as an interview condensed into one question." People take photos of the things they would take with them and can submit it to the site, along with a short listing of each item. It is such a brilliant idea, as it truly does reflect perfectly this notion of what we value. Here are some of the submissions:
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| all via the burning house blog. |
What would you take with you?
5 comments:
Oh my gosh. What an incredible idea for a blog. It's hard to decide...but I think I would take my laptop, a picture of my grandparents on their wedding day, my red coat from New Zealand, my stuffed bear and my baby blanket which is now my daughter's.
Love this post, Mary! Such a cool blog idea, too.. it's so interesting to see what others would choose and quite surprising. I thought it was pretty funny that everyone in the photos took there cell phones (which all happen to be iPhones?).
I'd take my laptop since it has pretty much everything, my hard drive, camera, and I'd try to take my old photographs, but not sure how possible that'd be. I'm sure there's more, but that's off of the top of my head. And that just for things.. obviously my cats would be #1 (well, 1-5, really, ha)!
wait why did the girl in the second picture bring a bunch of corks? I don't see any bottles?
I say leave the corks in the burning house.
What an interesting question to try and answer! Okay, I know what it would be: (1) my cats, (2) my computer, (3) my grandmother's recipe book. As far as I'm concerned, everything else could be replaced.
what an interesting challenge! (the whole idea of simplicity and not getting attached to stuff is really interesting - have you read a new earth by eckhart tolle? he talks about that a lot)
so, for what i would take...
my dog, olive. my fiance, craig. (i know, those are kind of cheating answers). my grandmother's wishbone pin. the painting my parents gave me for college graduation....
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