So—I lost all of my favorite things.
Most of the items I spent months accumulating before launching on this trip are gone—laptop, kindle, camera, flash drive, Patagonia fleece and rain jacket, favorite jeans, favorite t-shirt, bible, journal, thermarest pillow, head lamp, makeup, water bottle, favorite earrings, favorite flannel, favorite scarf from Ecuador, adapters, medicine. It’s all gone—most likely scattered among different people in South America.
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I was at the bus station in Lima with 21 of my squad mates. We were all sitting with our 45 lb. packs and 25 lb. day packs waiting to start 56 hours of bus rides from Lima, Peru to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I walked over to watch a video of the girls on my team singing on the street with a Canadian-Peruvian-Christian rapper who we met in Chincha. I figured my stuff was fine with the rest of my squad mates.
About 2 minutes later, I walked the 10 feet back to my stuff, and my day pack was no longer sitting on the seat I left it in. I walked outside, foolishly hoping to see someone running away with my stuff. I’m not sure what I was planning to do if I saw someone with it, but it didn’t matter. It was gone.
My squadmates were staring at me, probably waiting for me to flip out. But I legitimately wasn’t mad. Sure, I didn’t want to lose my stuff, and was a bit frustrated that I let it happen, but even that felt like a wasted emotion.
I thought about my stuff getting stolen the day before when my team made the 3 hour bus ride from Chincha to Lima. I even spent some time asking myself questions about it—What stuff do I really need on this trip? What could I get by with? What would happen if my pack was stolen?
In my questioning I realized I could basically survive with only my passport, but I still decided to shove all of my favorite items in my day pack for the long bus ride to Bolivia (just in case my big pack got stolen—how ironic).
I can’t help but wonder if God was talking to me in this moment. And if He was, what’s the point? Why have all my stuff stolen? And why don’t I seem to be upset about it?
Maybe I’ve found some freedom—freedom from holding on too tightly to things, freedom from finding identity or comfort in “stuff,“ and freedom from anxiety about always needing to make the perfect decision.
Obviously, I don't think it's bad to have things, or even to want things. In fact, most of the stuff I lost has already been replaced during our 6 hour layover in D.C. But realizing how easily I can lose my favorite things forced me to also realize the futility of putting much stock in "stuff."
As I thought about my calm reaction to my stuff getting stolen that day, I was pretty pleased with myself. Wow, I’ve grown a lot. How cool that I really wasn’t mad that my stuff was stolen. How awesome that I no longer seem to be enslaved to “stuff.
Pretty soon after reveling in my own awesomeness, a new thought entered my mind.
I’m a slave to gratification.
Whatever makes me feel good is what I want. Whoever makes me feel good is who I want to be with. I’m so addicted to feeling good. It runs my life. Feeling good dictates my life.
People say things like, “It’s better to give than receive,” and the Bible says “To gain life you have to lose it.”
But if I know what makes me feel good, shouldn’t I just pursue that?
It brings me back to the Christian ideal that says I’m supposed to feel empty in order for Jesus to fill me. Even thinking about this makes me frustrated, because I’ve unsuccessfully traveled down that road for most of my life. I’m not sure why I’m so afraid of emptiness, but I am. Maybe Jesus doesn’t want me to feel empty as much as he just wants me to empty myself and submit to some sort of Lordship, which I don’t believe I have ever done.
But I wonder if the freedom I so desperately crave lies on the other side of emptying myself and giving up my constant pursuit of gratification.
Maybe.
It’s pretty scary though. Because if I give up the pursuit of gratification, I honestly don’t know what will fill me.
I only know how to delay gratification when it’s time-limited, and when I know what will gratify me once the delay is over—but emptying myself to be filled by Jesus is not time limited, and I have no idea when it will happen or if Jesus can fill me.
I see this tension like an inverted triangle, with me feeling empty at the bottom, and two paths that lead upward. One path leads to gratification. I know how to get to the top of that path. And in my hopeful mind, the other path leads to Jesus and contentment.
But here’s the problem—I don’t know how to get to Jesus, nor do I trust that he will fill me.
I don’t know if I can willingly choose emptiness in hopes of a greater freedom that I don’t fully believe exists, but maybe it’s worth it. Maybe that stuff about losing your life to gain it is true, but I don’t know for sure.
The 10-year-olds in Romania seem less self-consumed than me, and interestingly, a lot more content. It’s ironic to me, because I’ve always believed chasing my own pleasures is what will lead me to contentment. Maybe my constant obsession with self is the exact thing that has kept me from feeling gratified. Maybe I could try to be less focused on myself, and see what happens then.
