The Things We Carry & Keep
In college, I read the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. It’s about soldiers in Vietnam, and the physical things they carried emotionally tying them to their past.
As part of a writing exercise, we had to express emotion only through physical baggage — the items we were actually carrying.
We rummaged through our belongings, which for me revealed — a french english pocket dictionary, keys, a polka-dot umbrella, and other ephemera.
I was young, and everything I wrote felt trite compared to the actual war the book’s author lived through. But I just kept journaling, focusing on why I had these items to begin with.
I carry an indecisive girl and an umbrella in a town that can go from hot dry to monsoon season in under five minutes. Most days I carry a French English dictionary just in case I ever make it to Paris like ten-year-old me thought I should. I carry a note from my grandmother because I need something to feel close to her right now. And I carry a set of keys to open a house I don’t live in anymore and I’m not sure how I feel about it, yet.
Everyone around me had a plan — they were future teachers, accountants, engineers. As for me, I sat in class after class either reading, writing, or debating.
My post-grad plan was to collect human experience like sea glass for my magnum opus. On that particular day looking at my items, it struck me how utterly ridiculous that all seemed.
They all represented circumstance — hopes, dreams, needs. Most importantly, how lost I felt in my in-between state and how moored I felt financially. I’d just turned down my spot in the Paris study abroad program because I couldn’t afford it. And despite my umbrella, I seemed to always find a way to be rain soaked.
We all carry things with us. It’s part of what makes us who we are. And who we are is everything in how we approach and experience the world.
Sometimes the things we carry become baggage that no longer serves us. We schlep it from company to company, relationship to relationship, until the stories we tell ourselves become bigger than reality ever was.
As for me, I’m still the girl who always has an umbrella; I’m always a little armored for what could be. It might be time to be a little rain-soaked.
What are you armored up for?
The Rise of Objects
The things we carry, the things we keep, what about the things we take care of?
Last year, I wrote about the swell of support for physical, handcrafted, restored, personalized products. There’s a desire for care and quality in how something is made and maintained. We’re taking care of and taking pride in our objects.
I’ve seen a steady rise in communal restoration. Generations coming together to embrace fading arts like mending clothing, ceramic arts, car maintenance, woodworking, basic electrical repairs, growing vegetables, and more.
In my neck of the woods, the downfall of subscriptions is well underway. Instead, folks crave products that allow ownership and personalization, such as free alterations at point of purchase. It harkens back to a romanticized era.
The increase of analog purchases such as film cameras, vinyl records, board games, and typewriters further demonstrates the intersection of ownership, tactile experiences, and unplugged interactions.
But we’re still straddling on-and off-line with many breaking the illusion to sell their wares, show off their landline phone adapter, or hawk an aesthetic CD player. But I think this straddling worlds is a hopeful step forward.
Technology needs these creative and ethical counterbalances to shape the soul of society.
As a callback to — The Identity Cafe, we’re in need of a future that can’t be ordered off a menu. That mindset can start small; just create something that didn’t exist before you.
We've been primed for frictionless creation—Our teachers started teaching the test, then we got Pinterest, and now, AI. The process of brainstorming was slowly eroded.
Last weekend, I made a diorama with my daughter from only the materials we could find in our home and our imagination. There’s something satisfying about “from scratch.” There’s no kit, instructions, or ideal end result. Just creating.
Millennial Melancholy
Amidst the makings of our diorama, I played 2000s My Chemical Romance. Music carries memories, and it’s an expression of a collective, cultural moment.
After all, millennials were the generation that normalized “not okay” with our embrace of emo music and went on to make mental health awareness mainstream.
And we saw what almost was — the ladder, the house, the freedom of living well.
These influenced how we collectively approached and experienced the world. (Still do.)
For many millennials, work was a religion. We fought for office culture, meaningful work, and mission-driven companies. Now, we’re exiting in droves even when we’re successful.
Our coping mechanisms have been called optimism, nostalgia, and cringe. To me it’s more of a melancholy. A fleeting moment of contemplation that comes and goes with our faith in the cycle of ups and downs.
This too shall pass feels like a lie. So, call it vanity or a vestige of hope, but I think we’re grieving the almost.
Gen Z has been called cynical, apathetic, anti-work in online discourse, but I think they’re grieving what never was. That just feels different, but I think we all still want the same things — the freedom of living well.
It’s not going to be found in the facade of work. We’ve pierced the veil on the corporate jig. Instead, we’re in a moment where the systems and institutions will have to break, so we can rebuild them.
That might mean letting go of the almost and the never was to discover something new.
Related Reads
All of this reminds me of Feng Shui; how the corners we keep influence what we make room for. There's an art to arranging with intention because the sentimental tokens and trinkets we cling to can emotionally pull us backward instead of forward.
How we navigate feedback is an accumulation of everything we carry — fears, preferences, experiences, what we were taught, etc. Feedback loops get broken because discerning what belongs to you is difficult. It takes trusting and knowing yourself before feeling beholden to others’ baggage.
What baggage are you ready to stop schlepping around?
xoxo, Courtney
p.s. I finally saved enough for Paris five years after graduating, and I still had my polka dot umbrella by my side.
This was originally written for EverMore, the career companion. Everything I write is an accumulation of my humanities education and two decades in tech startups. While being a Head of People & startup fixer, I saw how much was broken for the employee, which inspired by to build EverMore and offer my 1:1 coaching sessions.
