My Prized Possessions
11 September, 2024
After reading this post at 47Nil, my thoughts slowly turned to the items that mean the most to me.
Even though I identify as a small m minimalist, I’m not against owning stuff. It just has to be the right stuff, and not too much of it. Most material things come and go, but there are certain items that stick with us for the longer run. There are items that have more than a dollar value. For me, those items are:
My passports. I have three (all legit, all legally acquired in case you’re wondering!). Together, they give me almost unfettered access to a huge swath of the world. I can travel those swaths without having to worry about visas or waivers. That’s priceless to me.
Two-volume edition of The Tale of Genji. It’s a beautifully bound boxed set, featuring Edward Sidensticker’s wonderful translation. My wife and I bought it at a second-hand bookstore in Kingston, Ontario in 1993 or 1994. The owner of the shop told us that it had been sitting there for several years, waiting for a buyer. And he was pleasantly surprised that people our age (we were in our 20s at the time) wanted to buy the set. It was worth every penny.
R0tring mechanical pencil. I’m not one to fetishize stationery, but when I saw that pencil I had to have it. It has a comforting heft and the silver metal body just looks badass. It’s a pencil for writing and drawing, not admiring. And it does that (at least, the writing part) very, very well.
Bicycle. For the longest time, cycling was one of my main forms of exercise and my main way of getting from A to B. While I haven’t been riding as much as I’ve wanted to in recent years, I’ve always valued my bicycle above most of my other possessions. My current bike isn’t anything special — a Trek Marlin 4 ATB. It does it job and will for years to come.
There are a couple or three of other items that I own which I could add to this list, but the ones above are the possessions I prize most. In some ways, they’re an extension of who I am and what I value beyond the material.