Experience builds on experience
Or, the more wrinkles you have the more (oh forget it)
It's now a commonly held belief that experiences are more important than possessions.
But you may think about it differently while watching The Repair Shop on BBC. The premise of the show is that guests arrive with precious, worn-out heirlooms and the workers at the Repair Shop repair them in the most tender, bespoke manner possible. When the guests get their heirlooms back they are emotionally overwhelmed at how beautifully the items have been brought back to life. It really makes you question whether experiences can achieve a higher status than someone's painstakingly, gloriously repaired hand-me-down.
I think there's room for both of course, although these past 70 years or so have swamped many of us with overflowing garages full of STUFF. I was guilty of a full garage too.
The BBC show focuses on the continuum of objects as they pass from one generation to the next. And meaning builds as the object travels through time. With experiences however, even if you had them with a precious family member or with the closest of friends — they become immediately yours and cannot be passed down to anyone else.
I recently had an encounter with a neighbor. He's an American in Bali too, and frankly it's kind of special to have an American neighbor, as there's not too many of us. Tim was on a racing bike and he was kind enough to stop and chat for a bit while I was doing my morning walk. Tim is probably in his early thirties and so I have three decades on him. The conversation went something like this:
Tim: I'm training for the Ironman competition on Lombok (a neighboring island).
Me: Wow! That includes a 100 mile bike ride?
Tim: Yeah. It does.
Me: Awesome. The closest I ever came to something like what you're doing is I bicycled across the USA when I was 19.
Tim: Really? I know someone who wants to do that this coming summer.
Me: The best part was spending 45 minutes zooming down the Rocky Mountains without having to pedal my bike.
Tim: Amazing!
Me: Well take care
Tim: Bye
I wasn't trying to brag to Tim. I was just trying to bridge the gap between seeing myself as an old man doing seemingly boring, daily walks, and recognizing Tim as a super athlete.
As a 19 year old was I thinking that, when I get old I'll be able to talk about my cross-country bike trip to young athletes in order to stay relevant? Of course not. I did the bike trip for the experience. To see if I could bike 3,000 miles without quitting.
As with any set of memorable experiences, they build over time. To think that almost 45 years have passed since I spent a summer bicycling 70 miles a day from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific ocean — close to half a century ago. Unlike an heirloom, the memories weren't handed down to me. They were handcrafted (and foot pedaled) by committing myself to completing a plan of action.
While this topic may seemingly have nothing to do with retiring as an expat in Bali, let's leave room for the idea that there's some congruence here. Since experiences build on one another they lead to new and even more compelling experiences. You might come to see your life as a journey, and having a variety of experiences keeps you alert for surprises and new challenges.
Quality experiences are not random things. They involve setting priorities, making a plan, and sometimes making bold decisions!
Moving to a foreign land involves a myriad of decisions, boatloads of unpredictable outcomes, splendid surprises as well as setbacks, and most of all — an ocean of new experiences.
Bring a precious heirloom or two!
Later,
Neill