Should you find yourself at the visitor’s center in Amicalola Falls State Park in Dawsonville, Georgia, it may seem quite odd that just outside the building hangs a scale from one of the support beams.
Then again, if you’re at that particular park, you would likely be aware that it’s the launch site for most northbound Appalachian Trail thru-hikers. And should your visit be in March or early April, the purpose of the scale quickly would become apparent.
You watch as one by one, eager, enthusiastic hikers hoist their backpacks on the scale’s hook. Some grimace when they see the pointer line up with a number: 45…50…55 pounds of upcoming agony. Others seem quite pleased. Under 30 pounds seems quite manageable for the trek ahead.
Yet there’s a more important purpose than simply informing hikers how much weight they’ll be carrying on their backs.
After the weigh station, grimacing hikers may make their way to a shakedown table where a veteran thru-hiker offers to go through the overweight pack and challenge its owner about the necessity of each item. The expert explains how item X—which seemed so helpful or desirable or needful to its owner—will essentially get in the way, hindering him or her from achieving the goal.
The objective: get that pack down to a reasonable weight and increase the odds that its carrier will make it to Mt. Katahdin 2,200 miles away.
A rather intimidating process, to be sure. I’ve read of novice hikers who sheepishly and reluctantly turned over their packs, struggled for cogent explanations for some of their stuff, and watched in near panic as the pro laid item after item in the “Leave Behind” pile.
Intimidating, but clearly helpful. Near the shakedown table, a hiker box accumulates all the items deemed unnecessary, frivolous, or simply excessive. And a small, nervous smile breaks across the reluctant novice’s face as he straps the now-lighter pack to his back.
Why the scale? Every unnecessary ounce in the pack makes the journey more difficult and increases the odds of never reaching the destination.
As a novice backpacker myself, I understand how easily the pack becomes bloated. Just visit REI.com or sierra.com or one of their brick-and-mortar stores. A seemingly endless offering of gear, gadgets, and garments screams, “You really need this…or at least you want it for that next hike!”
And just like that, pack bloat threatens success!
I thought of this whole overweight pack scenario while reading a recently published book and a few lines from an ancient text.
Things that Matter by Joshua Becker caught my eye a few weeks ago in a pre-release advertisement. The subtitle clinched my decision to add my name to the list to receive a copy on the release date. “Overcoming Distraction to Pursue a More Meaningful Life,” it read — a subject that’s been on my mind a good bit lately.
I didn’t know much about the author at all until the book arrived last week. For a number of years, he explains in his bio, he was a pastor in Vermont until a series of events led him into another kind of “ministry,” the ministry of minimalism, one might call it.
One particular “light-bulb” moment opened his eyes to just how bloated his pack had become. Becker writes:
My story begins in suburban Vermont while I was cleaning the garage, my wife was cleaning the bathrooms, and my 5-year-old son was playing alone in the backyard. I struck up a regular conversation with my neighbor who commented, “Maybe you don’t need to own all this stuff.”
The juxtaposition was striking. My possessions piled up in the driveway… my son in the backyard… my day slipping away… I immediately recognized something needed to change. My belongings were not adding value to my life. Instead, they were subtracting from it.
His book discusses several potential distractions that will rob us of a meaningful life, and my purpose here is not to write a full review (I’m barely halfway through the book). I’ll save that for another time. I want to zero in on two of them he mentions: possessions and money.
Possessions
Regarding possessions, Becker notes that “changing your attitude toward material ownership and getting control of your possessions is a necessary step to fulfilling your potential…. If you’re not minimizing your possessions, you’re minimizing your money, time, and potential.”
“Look around at your stuff,” he recommends. “…if they’re not tools to help you accomplish your goals in life, maybe the time is already here for you to start getting rid of a lot of them.”
In other words, the bloated pack will derail you from reaching the desired destination!
Money
As for money, Becker suggests,
“Money choices force us to look into our hearts. Specifically, we need to consider if we’ve made money an end in itself, rather than a means to provide or do what we consider important.”
He then poses a challenging question that begs an answer.
“Are we wasting too much of our one life—desiring money and always striving to get more of it? Because when we do, we will inevitably be distracted from things that matter in the long run? When is enough enough?”
An Ancient Text
With these chapters from a new book fresh in my mind, I came across a couple of passages in an ancient text that compel us to sheepishly, perhaps reluctantly, hoist our packs on the scale.
About three millennia ago, Solomon the wise wrote some thought-provoking maxims.
Now, keep in mind who this man was. First, he was the king of the nation of Israel at its political, cultural, and economic apex. And he was filthy rich. Gold bedecked everything in his palace, grand gardens offered aesthetic delight, anything he wanted he could afford to buy. So, he had far, far more than a paltry garage full of stuff!
In the midst of it all, he wrote:
Better a handful with quietness than both hands full, together with toil and grasping for the wind.”
– Ecclesiastes 4:6
A pack comfortably loaded with what I simply need to help me reach Katahdin is far better than an overstuffed one that leaves me laboring intensely and gasping for breath.
To be sure, this mindset flies in the face of our consumerist society, no?
I’m not an economist or the son of an economist, but my observation is that our western society is built upon the buying and selling of goods, the pursuit and acquisition of more.
We need more money because we have to buy more stuff. And then we need bigger homes with bigger closets and bigger garages and bigger storage spaces to hold all our stuff. And in the meantime, we need to rent storage spaces to handle the overflow.
And what would happen if everyone lightened their pack and bought only what they needed to reach Katahdin? Could our economy survive?
Remember then-President Bush’s advice after the 9-11 attacks that threatened to wreck our economy? “Go shopping!” he advised. Get our economy humming again!
A single handful of quietness is far better, opined a far wiser civil leader!
He also said,
He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver; nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them. So what profit have the owners except to see them with their eyes?
– Ecclesiastes 5:11-12
So to complement his earlier counsel, loving money—evidenced by the relentless pursuit of more—yields no satisfaction. There’s never enough! And acquiring more stuff doesn’t satisfy either. With the acquisition comes more responsibility, care, and anxiety.
No wonder Solomon concludes with a call to be contented with a lighter pack:
Here is what I have seen: It is good and fitting for one to eat and drink, and to enjoy the good of his labor in which he toils under the sun all the days of his life which God gives him; for it is his heritage.
– Ecclesiastes 5:18
I don’t know about you, but I’m looking down the trail toward the ultimate summit, but I’m also feeling the weight of the pack on my back. I may not like the process, but I’m thinking I need to hoist the thing on the scale for a much-needed shakedown.
