I’ve been very out of touch with my own emotions, wants and needs for a long time. And much of the past year has been about getting to know myself better: What do I want? What do I really like? For myself, not for my company, my family, for my team, for my career, but for me myself, just Steli.
And one thing I do know about myself is that I was a very utilitarian person, praying at the altar of productivity. “Get shit done” was my mantra.
And recently, I’ve started to pay more attention to surrounding myself with a few selected objects that give me positive energy, that sing more harmoniously with who I am and what I want my life to be like.
In this episode, I talk about how my good friend Juan, who happens to be a plant. I talk about the veneration of objects in Japan, and the power of caring for things beyond the fact that they are tools we use to do something.
Transcript
[00:00:00] now that I’m journaling a lot and I’m writing a lot, physically writing a lot, which I hadn’t done in ever.
I’ve never journaled or written as much as I do now on paper I was like, you know what? I’ve never Cared about what pen I use. It just, it’s always a hotspot, like a hotel pen of this, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever I have access to, that’s what I’m using to write on paper.
It was like, this doesn’t fit. I want to see what it feels like to write with a nicer pen or a pen that feels like. I put a little bit of thought in it because I’m using this everyday for so much time for such an important activity. It’s put a little bit of loving, a little bit of care, and I got myself a nice pan.
And the funny thing is the pen itself. Although it does feel nice to write with it. an, it looks nice in and of itself. It does nothing to my writing. Obviously you already know this. Everybody should know this. It does nothing to the writing. It doesn’t make me write better or more or anything like it doesn’t have any real utility around the [00:01:00] writing part other than kind of feels nice to write with that pen.
It’s a nice pen, but it doesn’t improve anything. My skills are not better because of it. It’s the sort of thing that. we do sometimes where I want to become a great writer. So I’ll buy an expensive pen or some shit like that, or I want to feel successful. So buy an expensive pen or something, but it wasn’t like that.
And it isn’t helpful in the writing getting better at writing piece of it, but what I’ve noticed and it’s still early, but what I’ve noticed is that it sings more harmoniously with many other elements in my life. Right. So if you look at the way I dress, if you look at my laptop bag, if you look at the way I arrange my notebook, my Kindle, my laptop.
If you look at the kind of cup that I like to use to drink a coffee from when I look at that pen at my desk, it seems [00:02:00] beautifully along everything else it’s makes more cohesive, more. Completing picture of the care and beauty that I want to be surrounded with and that I want to infuse into my life care and thoughtfulness, right.
Cohesion. And there’s many areas in my life where I had tremendous carelessness or like wastefulness, where I was just like, you know, you, you could, you could have like this beautiful desk. An image of a beautiful desk and then a orange McDonald’s pen or something, right? Whatever, like something that just a note that sticks out because it’s not in the same, like it’s not the same harmony harmonic scale.
So it just like, Ugh, this doesn’t make sense. And it speaks to, I don’t take, I don’t care about this. I don’t care about these things. And for me, it’s many areas of life where. I chose to be very careless about, and [00:03:00] now step-by-step, I’m playing with this. I don’t know. You know, it’s also too early to tell sometimes when I’m making big changes in the moment, these changes just by the mere fact that they’re changing things, they seem more important and more permanent, more impactful.
But let’s, you know, a year from now, you’re really, I will really know if this matters or not to me or if it’s sustained, but right now it’s kind of, it’s nice to see. Yeah, for me, there’s like an interesting duality in the swear. On the one hand, I get to point with the careless. Listen, as you know me, I have a lot of carelessness in my life around these things.
I do see the beauty of consciously choosing and caring about all these things work together. And I see the trap of becoming attached to it where one needs that. And then when, when one doesn’t have that, everything is dissatisfying. Yeah. yeah.
I, I think it’s [00:04:00] like about us, right? So it’s, it’s like, it’s internal, like it’s all on the spectrum and, it’s totally possible in ideal, right. To be in that space where you care about it without being enslaved to it. Yeah. Which probably is a difficult balancing act that. It’s hard to maintain for long periods of time, which is fine.
I, you know, I find this to be very, a very important comment, right? You can like construct these things and then you can make them more than they are because you give them meaning you can attach to them. And then you’re now enslaved to them. You’re not using. Those items, those items are now there to use.
You were have to have all these things or otherwise you can exist or function correctly. On the flip side, I think I was doing a version of this with the luxury of carelessness. Like I was using [00:05:00] there, things that I did not pay attention to. There were many, many things I didn’t pay attention to. And I was telling myself, I don’t pay attention to all these things.
Cause I pay attention to so much in life and this was my luxury and more important than meaningful things.
right. Yep. Yep. Th this is something I, give myself gift because it would burden me to have to deal with this or care about it. And now we always come back to the extremes, if you have four items that you really love and that really mattered to you and you carry them with you in life, maybe that oftentimes communicates a better balance than somebody that has nothing, that they care about.
Somebody where every item they have has to be perfect or something. You know what I mean? With carelessness? It’s the same thing with me. I dunno if this is true or not, but in the past couple of [00:06:00] months, I thought, oftentimes there’s so many things I never wanted to pay attention to anymore. And then I was also never interested or never willing to pay attention to me and my needs.
Huh. I wonder if these two are connected, right. Because I would go to cities. And people will invite me to restaurants and bars and clubs. And that would show me the greatest places and give me amazing experiences. And I would take all of that for granted and not pay attention. And a week later you could be like, wow, you visited this amazing city.
Was there anything cool? I’ll be there next week. And I would not be able to tell you anything. I’d be like, I went to every day to the dopest places by all one is like the, I don’t know, I don’t, I didn’t pay attention to the name of these places, how I got there. and that to me was luxury. I’m just like, I’m just showing up here and you people move me around.
Yep. Birthdays names of people. I’m like, ah, I don’t remember names. Can’t [00:07:00] remember everything birthdays. I’m not a birthday person. I’m not a celebration person. I’m not a gift person. Can’t have it all. I don’t gift many, many other things. Like I could make a huge list and I’m not saying that all these things I’m going to be perfect or should be, or need to be and just Re-examining how much of that is truly a worthwhile luxury or something. That say no to in my life. Right. Where I say this. I won’t care. I can’t care about everything. So this I’m going to be really bad at. So it can be really, really good at this other thing, I have to say no to things, to be able to say yes to things.
And what are some things where saying yes to this thing is not really saying no to anything else. as an example, I haven’t thought this through till the end by now, but if I go to a restaurant. And I, I am invited somewhere and I have an incredible experience. It’s not that hard of a work to pay attention to.
What is this place called? How did you guys find find it? Oh, I will remember. I’m in the city. This is a beautiful place to come to. Or if they’re friends or people I [00:08:00] care about that come to this city, I will recommend them to come to this special place. This it’s not a bank account where it’s like, if I remember this name, I’ll forget some other thing.
And a memory doesn’t quite work that way. And that only elevates the experience that only makes me more present, more appreciative. It makes it also more permanent. Now there’s a place that’s familiar to me versus I make every place a blank and I just go and eat great food anywhere and everywhere. And I never cared to pay attention to it.
Yeah. That to me is sort of like a laziness. I think I’ve established through this. Habit of saying, there’s going to be many areas of my life. I’m not paying attention to because I’m not interested. They’re not really that important. And I want to, that’s all my energy to more important things that which in and of itself is a solid philosophy to have or approach as always.
And as with everything, overused is abuse and I overused it to the [00:09:00] point where I think I got very lazy with my thinking. Like recently I started thinking. if there’s anything to remember, I don’t even attempt anymore. I never attempt to really remember a street name, a number, anything, and just like, I’m going to type it in my phone.
Or, uh, this other person will remember a while. Like, I, I just never attempt to memorize anything anymore in life. I don’t think that’s good. This is not good. Not good training for my brain. This is just being lazy. I was just the being a lazy fuck. so there’s these little things I play around with.
and then funny enough yesterday, I was at the, at the gym here and on television. That was this, some kind of , uh, interview report about. In Japan in Kyoto, I think there’s this actor, this like theater actor, student, these traditional Japanese, whatever they are theaters, right. With kind of all the super intense makeup and all that, and [00:10:00] crazy grimaces that he was doing in his plan.
Everything he’s like a super famous. Theater actor, but on top of it, he’s also, I don’t know what it was, but let’s say the crown Prince of Japan or something like a royalty. And I like handsome motherfucker. And so it’s one of those, like Jim TVs where they don’t have the sound on. So you just read the subtitles and you don’t get the whole story.
You just get bits and pieces as you look at it. But. It appeared as if there was this big deal about this person. That’s actually like royalty, but fell in love with theater and became like the super famous expressive theater artist. And that lives this interesting life, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I don’t know why exactly there were, you know, doing this thing about him, but.
As I was watching him on stage. He had these like bombastic costumes on and this crazy makeup and he was making these crazy Japanese faces and he just grimaces to us, to my European eyes is over intense facial expressions of emotions during the theater play.
[00:11:00] It’s kind of really cool. Like he, I never watched, anything like that. And. I was watching a and I was like in awe, I was like, this is difficult. Like making these fake, like expressing this so intensely. This is tough. Like this guy’s good. This is crazy. And then you would seem like cut in a beautiful whatever hotel room with the CNN interviewer reporter guy.
And you would see him just Chaim, possibly dressed. If I told you like fucking the Japanese James Bond, boom, you would know who I’m talking about. Like. Just this beautiful aristocratic gentleman with everything about his posture and his look was perfection, but he also, you sense this deepness in his eyes and his answers that there’s, he is a very wise, very honorable, very smart and humble man.
Right. that flashed me too. A friend of mine, that’s from Japan. Who’s also has been on the kind of tech keynote speaker circuit for many, many years. So we [00:12:00] were keynote speaker, friends, and. He had posted on, on Facebook, an old valuable pen of his that was gifted to him by IBM. I think when he left there many years ago and he had posts, there was like a translation.
So the original originally he had posted this in Japanese, I think. And the translation was kind of like a little messed up because he wrote something like, this is my old friend, He was hospitalized, his, Ink dried. So we had to hospitalized to the blah, blah, blah. And then a bunch of people in the comments were like, love the translation.
Instead of saying like, you, you brought it to a repair, the translations said hospitalized. And then he responded and said, you know, actually the word that I used in Japanese is hospitalized because in Japan, when we, when we talk about things, we talk about them as we would talk about things that are alive, like personality.
So when we say we bring the laptop to repair with the laptop is sick or something, instead of the laptop is broken. Like a thing. We talk about these things [00:13:00] as if they have a life. And I was like, Well, this is one of, those are one of those moments where you’re like, Oh, Japan has such beautiful wisdom.
Sometimes, you know, there was this, there was a moment where I had that was like, yeah, that’s kind of dope. Yeah. That is kind of the dust change the way you look at things quite drastically. And this is also one of the things that I personally loved trips of the magic that touches you when you visit Japan.
One thing that really touched me experiencing it was this. Incredible care of things like taxis that were from the twenties or something kind of from the forties, but looked like they were just brand new cars. And that all these old tech, new tech, like all these technologies that you could tell electronic stuff that they built in the eighties, but it was still pristine.
Everything was just pristine, beautifully taken care of aging, very gracefully. Right. Um, and so there’s a, there’s a beauty, vivid. Yeah. Currently it’s through the entire culture [00:14:00] and through the like little post that made all the European and American friends go LOL hospitalized, you know, he was like schooling all us fools.
He was like, yeah, well, mama fuckers, I did right hospitalized. And there is, you know, as I, as I was watching this, like this Japanese theater actor, royalty dude, Again, it struck me that there’s something really beautiful and really human, in taking care. Of yourself and of things and investing deeply in love in craft, but also seeing that, the room I’m in is an extension of myself in some ways, right. Not disconnected from the things that are part of my life because I chosen them.
So there are physical manifestations of parts of me. Yeah. it’s a way of honoring yourself and what’s around [00:15:00] you, right? Yeah. the other thing that relates to this is plants. Plants are a thing I have collectively in my entire 38 years on this planet. I thought about plants maybe for five minutes in my life.
In three second increments. Right? I never cared about plants. I never paid attention to them. I never bought a plant in my life. I never fought. Oh, this room could use a plant. It was any time people would ever discuss plants. I would just. Go somewhere else in my mind, I think like I was never present for any of this.
I, you know, heard the stories and I know intellectually, if you were like right. Everything you know about plants, I could write some stuff. Oh, you know, People, I happy in a houses with plants, plants, you know, but when you talk to them quality. Yeah, yeah. And I heard like they, you know, they, they can grow more beautiful when you sing to them or talk to them.
[00:16:00] There’s things you have to take care of them and everything. I have, I couldn’t write half a page of information that I’ve, you know, I’ve held onto, but I’ve never really thought about plants at all. Cut to. Um, like two weeks ago where I went to a coffee shop and I ordered my, a double espresso, like always do and I pay, and then there’s like this, you walk a couple steps further.
And then there’s like a little corner where you wait to pick up your thing. Right. This is a coffee shop. That’s in a, in a kind of nice little boutique hotel. So it’s not like a full fledged. Coffee shop. It’s just like a little coffee shop, corner of sorts. And so I go to the corner where wait to pick up my order and I see a plant and the plant looks completely like I would have never noticed it existence.
It looks. [00:17:00] Wholly unremarkable except for one. Yes. That is one my friend, except for one thing, which is, it had a name tag on it and it said, Juan, and when you looked at the plant, I thought, yeah, that does make sense. This does look like what would look like. And for the first time in my life, and it was not even like a cheesy, like name tag or something that was like, Oh, it was just like a little piece of paper that had his name on it.
Right. It’s his name on it? And I looked at it and I was just like instantly smitten by quant. Like I was instant, just like Quan. Huh? I was just looking at this plant waiting for my double espresso. And then I got my double espresso. It was just still stayed there for a couple of seconds because it was.
Was like, that is kind of cool. This is like instantly gives this a likeness to it. Not like now I cannot, I can’t, unthink what I thought, which has been, you are life and your character. [00:18:00] It’s kind of a cool character. It has a personality it’s kind of, it’s just a plant that’s chilling there and just cheering you on.
As you pick up your coffee, it’s just like, Hey dude, like it has that kind of an energy, nothing, very ambitious, but kind of content, but it wasn’t, Doug has his phone, his own vibe. And I took a picture when I was there because I thought. Maybe I need people. I need to bug by a plant. They call it Kwan and put it in Germany in my apartment or something.
Maybe that will make me happier to have like a roommate called Juan. And then I forgot about it again, cut to yesterday morning where I wrote to you, there was in terrible mood yesterday morning. I was in as bad of a, of a mood as I’ve not been in a month. And it was the kind of mood where I thought of.
Ordering a pizza and starting to binge watch a show on Netflix for the, the entire, I never had that. I haven’t had this impulse in over a [00:19:00] month. Right. And so I’m like, Whoa, this is interesting. Why am I this bad of a moot? And I wasted like about an hour. Trying to fix or figure it out, fix it or figure it out.
I was like, should I read a little bit, no journal, no shame. It was kind of like hopeless. I was like, what should I do? I don’t know what to do. The only thing I knew was I’m not going to order a pizza and watch Netflix right now. This is not going to help me. And then eventually after an hour, I really didn’t know what to do.
And I was like, you know, just go out on a walk just 10 minutes that doesn’t help. You’re back to square one, and then you can S you can then figure out what to do, but maybe it helps just do it. And I went out and as I was walking, I wanted to walk on the kind of nature trail. And then I thought, no, maybe it’s time to visit Kwan again.
Maybe I should just good scope, grab a coffee and check out what fond is up to [00:20:00] that thought alone. Shoot me up. Right. That thought, that thought alone was like a blessing. Then I’m walking to the hotel and I’m ordering in the moment I so hot this time. It was not a, Oh, this is interesting. I applied with it.
I was just like, in my head, obviously not loudly because you know, That would draw too much attention. And in the U S it might get me into trouble, but as I see Juan I’m like, who dude, what’s up? How you doing? How are you doing? I’m having a shit morning. And Juan did not speak with a funny voice, like in a Pixar movie to me, but it was just its energy.
It was just like, could not be bothered. Life is always great for Juan. Juan is always in a good mood. Just chilling and just that I was like, ah, can I just drink my coffee here with you? And Juan was like, “not a care in the world, of course”. I’m just sitting there and I’m just sipping at my coffee and looking at Juan within three minutes, my mood has completely [00:21:00] changed.
Right. I was like, dude, you’re the fucking best. I’m going to visit you more often. You’re the kind of light part that energy that I need in my life and quantity, not care obviously, or quality is always one. And he’s always worried with where he is, but he brightened my day. And then I sit down at the lobby and I wrote a little bit, and by the time I came back, I was in such a better mood than I then.
Worked on a bunch of stuff. And I went to training and it just hit like, and then a really great day, which really turned into my perception of the day as amazing because of the terrible start, right. The place where I started. So negative that getting to a reasonably positive state was now was ecstatic.
At the end of the day, I felt incredible. It was a beautiful little, like from dark to light and the shift. As far as I can tell, [00:22:00] you know, was a plan called Juan called me crazy, but it worked for me. And now I’m like, I guess I have to get a plan, but the problem now is C. Now the problem is I can’t like if you had told me, Steli, it makes you 7% more productive to have a plant and your desk, and this is the best, next thing you can do, just do it.
Don’t think about it. Just do it would have just driven somewhere and picked up the first fucking plant. Pete. And I would’ve spent two minutes on this task. Right, right. But now I’m like, well, I can. I want one. I just, I can’t buy any fuck. Like, I don’t want some asshole in my, in my apartment with some like, stressful.
I want a live or something like that. No, not a Detlef, not a Cornelius or something. Like, I want one, like if you just see a plan and go that’s one. Yep. Yep. But I want him now. Like I want him in my life [00:23:00] where now I’m like, I bought into this idea that I want this, and this is another thing. This is another small thing.
Just, you know, in and of itself, not a big deal, but it’s this two, one on one layer. It’s a playfulness that’s re entering my life that I deeply enjoy is infused with this creativity a more openness, but then there’s also this I think.
Taking like investing in a few things in ways that are bringing energy around me, that, you know, it gives me the gives that infuses me with life. Right. Because when I look at that, if I, and when I find Kwan and I have it. You know, if now when I go back to Germany, to the apartment, the Airbnb apartment that I’m like temporarily using, [00:24:00] when I arrived at the apartment, there’s nothing there.
I’m looking forward to. I’m just like, I’m just, it’s just like a hotel room. I just arrived. It means nothing. I just put my stuff up, my laptop, my notebook, whatever. I just do my stuff, but there’s nothing there. But if I had one there. I will get into your apartment and be like quad new. What’s up. Nice to see you again, at least for like the first three seconds, five seconds.
I’d be happy to see this plant. I do sound a little crazy, but it’s fun. It is much funner to be crazy than to be like, like normal. Like the worst is enough normal people already in this world. It’s not that I wasn’t seen before. It was just insane in a very serious way, which is the worst of it. Sanity’s seriousness, right?
Overt, seriousness to be more playful, but that alone, like a fucking plant that alone and one. Like you would expect with Juan is not an expensive [00:25:00] plan. I don’t know for sure, but I know it’s not, you can tell it is not an expense. It doesn’t have to be because it’s an awesome plan. It doesn’t have to be expensive.
And so just that, like a little thing, I dunno, probably cost like 20 bucks or something. A 20 buck plant could make the difference between me walking into a cold functional space when I’ve traveled for a long time. And I’m now. Practically at my second home or my first one, whatever the way you want to look at it, or me entering in going to a thing and feeling like having a smile on my face and feeling a warmth and a familiarity and a, and an arriving and a welcoming, just a little thing like this.
Right. I mean, I imagine, I don’t know, we’ll find out maybe I’m dice and then I am more to him and I realized. You know, I can’t take care of a quad right now. You know, when I travel somebody else’s to [00:26:00] do this, I don’t know. We’ll see. But but the idea is highly entertaining. It’s amusing me to no end that I’m thinking about Juan, like that alone is mind blowing to me that I went to visit him yesterday and then he did cheer me up.
I was just like, funny, like, this is just. It’s just the best right now. Like these little moments, you know, what I love about yesterday about that little moment is there’s a, on a mental level. There’s this recurring feeling I have that I, I need to reign it back a little bit, reign it in a little bit.
And that comes with. Maybe you’re over analyzing a little bit. Maybe you’ve over-inner-worked a little bit. Maybe you’re over criticizing. Maybe you’re over optimizing. Maybe you’re over-changing. A [00:27:00] recurring thought where I go, just chill a little bit. You were doing so much fucking work.
I’ve made so many great changes. This was a monumental year. That I had in terms of just the amount of inner work that I did, the amount of changes that I’ve created for myself, just monumental might just chill the fuck out, it’s fine. Yesterday. I had to practice not to have to figure out why I was in a bad mood.
I didn’t fully succeed in it. I had many moments where my mind did go to trying to find a reason. But just to go, Hey, it’s, I mean, it’s good to stay with these feelings. And oftentimes when you are present for them, you don’t run away from them. They reveal a big or important truth, and then it resolves itself and it benefits your life.
And that’s all beautiful, but it’s also fine sometimes to sit there and be like, [00:28:00] I am grumpy right now. I can’t figure out why. And it doesn’t matter. It’s fine. I’m alive. To be alive means to also have feelings and moments that are not great. Just that’s not important. The why is not all you can overwhy things.
Right. And so if I don’t know, that’s fine as well. What do I do now? And, to some degree I love that what helped me yesterday, the most was not some deep spiritual meditation. It was not some fucking journaling. It was not some technique I read in some book about self-help or, about enlightened living.
It was just Juan the plant at the coffee shop. So to me that’s even better than all these other things. Right. And that’s, you know, that’s the thing. Over the last few weeks with more presence and more openness, there’s been more creativity. And what [00:29:00] I find is that creativity for me is really the key to playfulness.
It allows me to be okay to be more playful because I do suffer from seriousness like that is I’ve had this my entire life. Even as a child, I do have a tendency. To be too serious to take myself too seriously to take my problems, my PR to be too harsh and too serious on every minute of every day of how I live in hard performance.
What I do and constantly is that I’m constantly like a judge, the judge and the jury. In the case of did Steli live up to his whole potential this very now, right? And that’s just, can’t live like this. This is too much once in a while you need a fucking judge and a jury to be like, fucking your ass is in jail.
Your bitch right now, you’re not doing what you’re supposed to [00:30:00] do, fucking wake up or you, you know, dear consequences are gonna show up. Then that’s fine. You have to be judged at times. Judgment is not bad. Some of them. They’re like, everything is an extreme old, no, non-judgment it’s, if that’s a good thing, not judgment is the biggest judgment ever because it judges all judgments.
Right. But not saying that never, but like, and it’s every hour of every day, it’s, that’s terrific. She can not, nobody can live functionally. I have a good life that way. And I did drift to that direction for a long time. And I’m sure I’ll be drifted. It’s a tendency I have. But I. I very much enjoy the playfulness that pops up here there in my days right now.
And yesterday’s visit to Kwan was definitely a highlight. So, but you know, there’s, there’s uh, so when you talked about objects that we really care about and we love, I thought, well, the thing the recent came into my life, and then you talked about plants and I thought about that same thing [00:31:00] again.
And then you talked about how your day went like from dark to light. And I thought about the thing again. So I’m just going to tell you what it is. I bought a present for a good friend of mine. It’s like wooden box. Right. And it’s fucking beautiful. Before, and I heard it at the guy’s place who made it right?
I, I, I was like, Oh, okay, just keep it for me. And it wasn’t there a couple of months. And then recently I went there to pick it up. I’m like, huh, this is even more beautiful than I thought he’s gonna fucking love this. Right. So bring it back home. And then. Put it on my desk. And, especially when we were talking, oftentimes I would just take it and this like this, top that you can like slide out.
Right. And then slide out the top and holding my hands. And it’s heavy. But it’s so smooth that it feels light. Like there’s a, like a physical paradox in it for me. Right. And it’s from a tree that was partially submerged in mud for a long time. So there’s [00:32:00] this transition from, dark on the one end to golden and shiny on the other, because we’re like, it went from wet to dry.
Something about structuring trends that are very beautiful. the L like the longer wasn’t my testimony, like, huh? Funny if I hadn’t bought this at the present, I would keep this to fucking give me this.
Well, maybe you bought it for somebody else, but actually it belongs to you, right. It’s actually like a present to yourself that you just didn’t know, you know, until, you know, I know now, you know, that’s beautiful. That is dope. Yeah. These things, you know, Big things have small beginnings and I think this idea that, how you do one thing is how you do everything parts again, that’s a very statement. And part of me is resisting that because there are exceptions, right? You do not do everything the same way, but there’s also truth in it paradoxically at the same time. And just, owning.
Consciously a few things that you [00:33:00] care about and then seeing your life and asking yourself what is an energy that is missing? What is an entity that could enrich in my life? And how do I bring this about, instead of, you know, when you are overly. And then only functional society and in a overly productive life, you just look at all items as dispensable, purely utilitarian, right?
Like at times I could have, I was very wasteful because I was just like, these are all just, I like to me to arrive at a place without, you know, the necessary clothing. And then I don’t want to have to predict the weather and I don’t want to carry too much wrong because I travel too much. And then just get what I need in that place there, and then maybe gift it to somebody or instead of carrying to the next place I’m going, that’s insanely [00:34:00] wasteful to some degrees, but in some ways that was the, that was something that I would enjoy, right.
That would be like, this is a luxury that I enrich my life with because I just don’t care about. Caring about things. I just use them when I need them and then I give them away. Um, and that can be fun and that can be good and, and useful at times. But when you just look at everything around you is just purely utilitarian.
There might be like, uh, a metaphorical mirror there about how you see your, your value in life. Right. If I’m not of use. Then I’m dispensable and I’m useless.