The Stress of Objects

You don’t feel it when your life is stable. When your stuff is safe at home and you never risk much more loss than a misplaced wallet. Losses are annoying, but quickly resolved.

Intensification

But your possessions are kind of like a cracked rib: you really feel them only when you move. When you breath. Pickpocket signs are everywhere here in Bangkok, even at the temples. Guest Houses and hostels are never responsible for stolen goods. You’re moving around a lot and everything vital is with you and not locked away in a home you own, in a safe only your key unlocks. Objects left lying about will likely walk off rather than be returned to a friendly clerk.

And the objects you do possess while traveling are more important, more concentrated. Replacing your stolen debit card from another continent would not be a simple matter of calling and waiting a few days for a thick nondescript letter to arrive. Losing your passport would involve finding a consulate and cracking it open to find a prize of bureaucracy. And if enough of these few objects were lost, your money, your cards, your identity — what happens then?

Dhukka

All this is what my mind worries about many times a day. What can I risk keep in my room? How much do I trust the locks, lockers and safes? The people on the streets? My hosts? My fellow travelers? What do I need to carry with me all day long? How vigilant do I have to be in crowds? I’m repeatedly weighing the physical comfort of carrying less through the steamy streets with the emotional comfort of being in constant contact with everything important, not worrying about it back at my room.

It’s a neat coincidence that I’m traveling in a Buddhist country and experiencing this. Buddhism teaches about the suffering caused by grasping at possessions. You want them and you suffer, you get them and you suffer the fear of loss. When they inevitably pass on from you, you suffer that real loss. As my possessions get fewer I feel my grip tighten. And not just the grip of my hands, worries about security grip my mind more and more.

But You Should be Worried, Right?

The hard part about many fears is that they make sense. Some spiders bite. Fall from a cliff and you might break something. You might break everything. My fear of falling makes my mind imagine slipping so intensely it blocks out everything else. It makes be want to jump into the void to end the pressure. So it is with this rational concern over objects: the fear causes me to obsess about them. I pat my pockets many times an hour. Phone still there? Wallet still there? Find my passport in my bag or in the safe just to lay eyes on it. Count my money.

Or Maybe Let it Go

Beyond a certain a point — motivating sensible precautions — the stress doesn’t help. It’s corrosive. In the beginning it was intense and constricting.

Yet I already feel the tension draining away. Easing. And perhaps that’s a benefit of travel: you feel the stress and weight of your possessions more keenly, enough to pinpoint it, weary of it and ultimately let your heart relax around it.

That would be a wonderful gift to pick up along the road.