My husband, our three kids, and I have been full-time RVing for the past 20 months. It’s probably the craziest thing we’ve ever done. We sold our house, and sold or gave away the majority of the rest of our stuff. Then we struck out on our adventure.
The thing about doing something like this is that it gives you space from regular American life, which is extremely hard to get otherwise. I think it’s good to get this distance, at least for a time. But in this space, uncomfortable questions arise. The one that is most persistent for me is, what really matters?
Several years ago, I stopped watching the news. Previous to this, I was a newshound. I kept abreast of all the latest political happenings in the world, and all the latest controversies within our own government and within the popular culture. I spent many of my waking hours watching, reading, and talking or thinking about the news, because I believed the news really mattered. But the truth was, it was making me a miserable human being.
I started to think that people who disagreed with my worldview were brainless, and heartless. Basically, they weren’t human. When I finally decided to stop watching the news, it gave me the space I needed to be able to question the worldview my constant consumption of news had built. The longer I went without the news, the more peaceful and better my life became. I came to the conclusion that the news does not matter. The space made it so that I was able to start seeing people as people again. People who had brains and hearts and who, at bottom, wanted basically the same things that every human wants and needs.
And now, living in a class C RV makes me question things on that front. What do humans really need? We live in less than 300 square feet as a family of five. We’ve never been closer, literally and figuratively. When we lived in a 1900 square foot house, which we thought we needed, we talked less and I was less aware of how everyone was doing or feeling. Our communication has improved, and even though we have less stuff now, I feel like we have more in the most important ways.
But this realization, that I can live on less and actually be happier, is unsettling. I know from my own experience we’ve been more content living this way than we did when we were living the prototypical American dream, up to and including the house with the white picket fence. And yet, part of me feels pressured to go right now and buy a big house, where everyone can spread out and have their own space. This would mean, most likely, going into deep debt that we’d still be paying off long after the kids are grown and married. The space might bring space to spread out, but it might also make us grow further apart. The debt incurred might put stress on us and make our lives less happy.
So I wonder, what do we really need? What really matters? I don’t have all the answers, but there are some things I feel very sure of now:
- Time spent with family and friends matters
- Providing for your family matters
- Alleviating suffering matters
- Having stuff isn’t important
Another thing that has made me question what we truly need is that I’ve learned there are people in the world with drastically different lives than the ones we live here in America. There are babies dying of malnutrition in Tanzania. There are widows in Malawi that need shelter. Many people in the world have to walk miles to get to their water source, only to get sick and ultimately die from drinking it, because it is so contaminated. It makes the idea of “needing” to take out a $200,000 mortgage to buy a 2,000 square foot house frivolous and opulent by comparison.
I have regretted buying plenty of things, from a disappointing $47.05 spent on a fast food meal for our family, to $28,175.91 on a rather foolhardy new car purchase. Stuff, many times, has left me feeling regretful and empty. On the other hand, I have never regretted a single cent I’ve ever donated to try to help alleviate the suffering of other people.*
I still don’t know what the right amount of stuff to have is. And I don’t know to what extent we have a responsibility to alleviate suffering of those people in the world versus enjoying our own lives and buying stuff for ourselves. My family enjoys plenty of luxuries. We go out to eat, we travel, we play video games together. I don’t think that’s bad or wrong. I’m well aware that our market economy is the reason we have such abundance here in America. I don’t believe it’s bad to buy stuff. In fact, it is important to keep our market economy going, and one way to do that is to buy stuff.
So what really matters? At this point, I think it’s people.
*My favorite way to do this now is through Donorsee, because I can pick specific projects that are focused on specific people, and I get video updates about how the project went and how the recipients are doing. It’s a great way to help alleviate suffering in the world.