How to Make Your Life Feel Real
As I was packing for my month long trip to the Philippines, I cleaned my room. Not a deep clean, just the kind you do when you want to come back to something decent after being gone for a good while. I dusted the surfaces, vacuumed the floors, laundered what needed to be laundered.
And then I stood there and looked at all of it.
Containers upon containers of yarn. Knitting needles, crochet hooks, odds and ends of hobbies I've bought materials for but haven't even tried yet. Towers of physical books, notebooks, full pens, stockers. Gadgets, new and old, most of which I haven't touched in months. Clothes still packed in their storage bin from last winter because I never even needed them. So much makeup. So much stuff.
And yet some days, I still feel bored. Some days I still want more.
I've been in the Philippines for about a week now, staying with family who are — by local standards — well off. I want to be honest about that because the contrast I'm noticing isn't really about poverty or simplicity born out of necessity. It's something else.
Even here, in a comfortable household, things are treated differently. The kids of the family have office jobs that don't pay a lot. They save up for PCs, for hobbies, for trips. Not in a deprivation way, but in a deliberate way. There's a relationship between them and the things they want. There's a gap of time and intention that makes the thing, special, when it actually arrives because it means something.
Watching that made me feel two things at once: a little lame and a little sad. Because back in Canada I've pretty much completely lost the ability to wait for something. What's the point of saving up for it when I can just tap my card? What's the point of anticipating something when everyone around me probably already has the whole collection? The abundance of things killed all the wanting. And the wanting was, I'm realizing, part of the point.
I know this is the part where I'm supposed to say something about slow living or analog life or disconnecting from technology and capitalism. And I agree, those things are real and worth talking about. But I don't think that's actually what I'm unraveling here. I've read enough content to have it slide right off me.
What I think I'm feeling is actually something much simple and harder to name. It's about touching your life. Interacting with it instead of passing through it.
When you cook every meal from scratch, you participate in living. When you hand-wash something and hang it out to dry, same thing. Saving up for the thing that you want, you actively think about your future. When you use something until it's genuinely finished, you touch what you already have. None of this is romantic. It's just friction. And the point is the friction. It keeps you in the here and now.
This morning I woke up before everyone else in the house and I sat in the living room with a book. The house was quiet. The light was soft. There was nothing in front of me except the story and I read slowly. Not skimming to get to the exciting bits like I'm prone to do when I get bored. I was just there. Genuinely content. Present in a way I don't often feel very much abck home.
I've heard a thousand times the goal is to live in the present. I've never really figured out what it felt for me until this week. I'm not going to pretend I've figured it out — I've barely scratched the surface, and I'll most likely get home and lose the thread almost immediately when life picks back up.
I want to try to bring something with me: the idea that engaging with what I already have — the cooking, doing the dishes, doing chores around the house, finishing up what I have — isn't a waste of time. It isn't something I should optimize away. It's the whole thing. It's what actually makes my day feel real and my life feel intentional and like mine.
I'll let you know if I figure it out.