Open House: Settling In With Settling Out

March 5, 2016

A few important things happened this week. Last Saturday night we moved out of the Grover Beach home in which my father spent the last four years of his life and where both of our children were born. By Wednesday morning the entire home, to the last cupboard and drawer (“oh my god, ladles”), had been emptied, cleaned and finished to the point of being presentable for professional photography.

The house went on the market around 9:30 Thursday morning and before the end of the day we had received a full price offer. Their offer expired the following day at noon—before our open house  would even have ended. So we countered, they accepted, and on Friday afternoon, as we slogged our way over the Camarillo grade, we got the message, sensed seconds earlier by the intuitive mother: “offer accepted!”

Pacha had just been saying, the moment my text tone chirped, “I can see their Realtor talking to them right now, telling them, ‘You gotta sign it!’” It’s reassuring to know that we’re in the flow, even if we do find ourselves in Woodland Hills at 4:30 on a Friday, separated from Orange County by an impenetrable mass of asphalt, rubber and steel. Yes, in spite of that glaring navigational blunder, we are most definitely in the flow.

For the time being, we’re staying in hotels. Two nights in Santa Ana and two more in Yucca Valley. Down here it’s easy to forget we have no home. We’re just on a little road trip to Southern California, that’s all.

But then I get these reminders. The other day I was walking out of the grocery store with a small handful of food—as of course I have nowhere to put anything larger than a handful of anything—when I see a woman walking across the parking lot carrying a desk lamp. The first thing I think is, what’s that woman doing in front of a grocery store with a lamp? But then it strikes me, hey, I used to have a lamp, several of them in fact. But not anymore.

Other times I’ll be at someone’s house, looking at items on a shelf, mentally itemizing the insignificant things I no longer own. Then while I’m washing my hands, I put down the soap and look over and think, geez, I suppose one of these days I’ll have go out a get a soap dish again. Yes, we really got rid of everything. But it’s refreshing.

It almost feels like a spiritual transformation, the shedding of all those possessions. As they say, you don’t own them, they own you. But it’s true, in a sense, that we do become our stuff, and it becomes us. We end up defining ourselves by what we have, as much as by what we do. As a homeowner, and even more so as a business owner, particularly a retail, inventory-based business, I was absolutely tied down and cornered by stuff.

I spent ten years defining and refining my business and my products, distinguishing the shop as a place for hard-to-find natural fiber, bamboo and organic gifts and apparel, as well as a space for ecological awareness, eastern spirituality and Buddha mindfulness. And slowly but surely, I came to be defined—at some level—by this relatively narrow scope of interest, and no less by the act of marketing it. Not that I ever deemed it an unworthy undertaking, but conscious consumerism does have a degree of irony to it that’s difficult to overlook.

So we look at this transition as a cleansing, a chance to remember who we really are, independent of our stuff, an opportunity to reconnect with our true selves. I’m not saying that it can’t be done without giving up one’s possessions, and I’m certainly not presuming any sort of moral or spiritual superiority. But there is, after all, a kind of natural law that separates the material from the spiritual, the earthly from the heavenly. When we de-emphasize one we can re-emphasize the other, and when we over-emphasize one we can stifle the other.

For me, it’s not about staking claim to some higher spiritual ground, but just satisfying a gnawing hunger for some secret subtle wisdom. But I can already see that, like anything else of real value, this wisdom will come at a cost, whether material, emotional or otherwise. I can’t say for sure, but just what that price is remains to be seen.

Read more about the departure process:

• Getting On and Letting Go
• Going places with emotional luggage
• 12 Steps to let go and discover the world

Or skip ahead to some of the highlights:

• WWOOFing with Children
• Q & A Post Work Away
• New Education for Global Citizens