So I just got back from a beautiful road trip through New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. I travel a lot for leisure and normally come home with a stockpile of souvenirs that I display in my home, something to remind me of my journeys. Right around the time I was about to set out on the road a couple weeks ago, I looked at all “my” past souvenirs and realized how attached I was to them all. I can’t tell you how often I’d notice a souvenir on a shelf or next to the tv and it would send me daydreaming back to those trips. Maybe not such a bad thing, but then I realized I was having not-quite-so-accurate memories of those past trips. Through my attachment to those souvenirs, I was creating happiness that probably didn’t entirely exist at the time, if that makes sense. I was remembering the trips the way I had wanted to remember them, not as they actually happened, in other words, forgetting the challenges on the trips or things that didn’t work out, and magnifying the fun times disproportionately.
So that being said, on THIS trip, I unexpectedly found myself not desiring to buy even a single souvenir the whole time. I wasn’t suppressing any desires- I looked deeply and just noticed they weren’t even there. In the past, I’d buy lots of mugs, and t-shirts, and animal figurines. This time? Nothing. There wasn’t any concern about how I’d have nothing to display to remind myself of RoadTrip 2010. Don’t get me wrong, I think out of some weird habit I did question whether I’d regret not having at least SOMETHING small to remind me of my trip, and I did browse a few gift shops, but there was nothing pulling, tugging, pushing, urging me to purchase. It was such a foreign, new feeling which is why I’m yammering on about it now.
So there you have it. Hey, it’s a start:)