I might have let myself get a little carried away when I described the people at our table at the luau a week ago, especially with respect to the woman from Scottsdale. I'm sure she's a very nice person, but she represents an archetype of a certain kind of tourist, and what I was mainly trying to do with that post is paint a portrait of personalities, almost a human still-life. It was an exercise in writing for me.
Mark and I were discussing this as we walked across Big Beach and Little Beach the other morning. I said I had not intended to make fun of anyone - poke fun, perhaps, but more at attitudes rather than any specific person. And I felt like I could do so because I have seen such behavior and mindsets in myself and have criticized and poked fun at them.
This led to me mentioning to Mark my post about what the tourist in Lahaina had been told about sea turtles. On that same trip to Lahaina, we had passed a shop where I saw a banner hanging near the door with a saying imprinted upon it about the meaning of life. I made a mental note of it at the time because it brought to mind what I mentioned to Mark the other morning.
I commented that one finds things like that banner in places like Lahaina because people feel something when they are here in Hawaii, and they want to take part of it home with them. When they see banners or plaques or tea towels with sayings on them about the meaning of life, or how it should be lived, this "something" is awakened, and so they buy these things. It's the equivalent of buying the sea turtle necklace, i.e., what I wrote about the other day.
I have seen the same phenomenon in Amish Country in Ohio. People go there, they experience the pastoral beauty of the landscape, they see Amish people driving horse-drawn buggies, they eat "homestyle" food (just the way somebody way back on the family tree used to make), and they take home souvenirs of hand-made Amish apple butter that is never eaten and plaques that say "Home Is a Feeling" or some such phrase, that they hang on the family room wall to gather dust. They try to purchase a feeling, but of course, they can't. But it makes them feel good - temporarily.
I know whereof I speak, of course, because I've been there myself. In various periods of my life and in various ways, I've tried to purchase feelings, concepts, lifestyles and even identities. Everything from buying "Old Fashioned" bread at the store to help support the illusion that I'm leading a simpler, more authentic life, to purchasing religious books to salve feelings of guilt (a topic for another post, another time).
As Mark and I commented, the sad thing about these purchases is that we typically don't really recognize what we're doing because we're not in touch with ourselves. We are, as Eckhart Tolle would say, being ruled by - kept on auto-pilot by - our Ego.
I think that travel presents a good opportunity to practice being mindful, to go beyond the egoic auto-pilot and to examine one's life and one's motives. Just the other day, for example, I was standing in a store looking at some wooden plates - sort of like the kind that were used at the luau a week ago. I thought it would be cool to bring a couple home for Mark and I to use, to remind us of the luau and our time here on Maui.
But then I thought how silly that was. First of all, I thought about why I really wanted the plates - to relive the luau, primarily. I didn't need these plates to relive an experience, as if plates could do that. Then I thought about using them over and over again back in our home in Utah, and how that would almost cheapen the memory I was trying to resurrect. Then, I thought of other, future, experiences: Would I want to bring home ceramic plates from Corsica because of a particularly memorable meal? How about pottery from Ohio? This is how bric-a-brac and "stuff" accumulate.
Going through this exercise in mindfulness helped me to distinguish between souvenirs and souvenirs - the French word for "memories." It also helps me to remember, when I see little plaques that say, "Life is Series of Moments" (or some such thing), that life is not about hanging signs on a wall about living moments, but about living moments.
Upon discussing this further with Mark, he drilled down to a deeper level, pointing out that what we are really trying to do when we purchase such souvenirs is capture and possess a feeling or an image that we experience or see on a trip, thinking that we can "own" it. This again brings out the difference between souvenirs and souvenirs: we cannot purchase memories; they come free of charge. But what helps us "possess" these memories, i.e., truly remember them, is the degree of mindfulness we bring to the very moments we wish to remember.
As I've been thinking about and writing this post over the past couple of days, a friend who has recently moved to a new place wrote to describe how she had yet once again been confronted with the issue of mementos. She is an only child, her parents are long departed, she has no children and is single.
"I think everything superfluous will not be making the next move," she wrote. "I drag a lot of sentiment around with me, stuff from my long-dead parents, little bits of flotsam from now-absent friends, and I'm always glad to see it when it emerges from the debris ... [I've] wondered ... if it's time to surrender some of this. It's not the object, but the now-absent attachment, the affection it represents, that makes me hang on to it; and as I see it, that remembrance is part of who I am."
I see mementos as fundamentally different from souvenirs. Souvenirs have no meaning in and of themselves, whereas mementos usually have - horcrux-like - part of a loved one's soul encased in the object. And, like a horcrux, we can almost sense an absent person's presence, feel their love and ours for them, when we hold or see the memento.
Mark is a minimalist and definitely doesn't collect mementos. But there is a bottle of Starbucks iced mocha in our fridge at home. It has been there for five years. It was left behind the last time Mark's father and mother visited him. Mark's dad loved mochas. A year later after that visit, he died of Parkinson's Disease. Mark keeps that bottle of iced mocha, not because of what it is, but because of what it represents: it has been infused with precious memories of his now-departed father.
A souvenir can become a memento because of the meaning infused in the object, but mementos, it seems to me, cannot by their essential nature become bric-a-brac unless the people brought to mind by such objects were themselves bric-a-brac, objects in our lives from another time and place.
When it comes to mementos, the key, as I see it, once again boils down to mindfulness. As our friend wrote, "It's not the object [itself], but the now-absent attachment, the affection it represents, that ... is part of whom I am."
Mark and I were discussing this as we walked across Big Beach and Little Beach the other morning. I said I had not intended to make fun of anyone - poke fun, perhaps, but more at attitudes rather than any specific person. And I felt like I could do so because I have seen such behavior and mindsets in myself and have criticized and poked fun at them.
This led to me mentioning to Mark my post about what the tourist in Lahaina had been told about sea turtles. On that same trip to Lahaina, we had passed a shop where I saw a banner hanging near the door with a saying imprinted upon it about the meaning of life. I made a mental note of it at the time because it brought to mind what I mentioned to Mark the other morning.
I commented that one finds things like that banner in places like Lahaina because people feel something when they are here in Hawaii, and they want to take part of it home with them. When they see banners or plaques or tea towels with sayings on them about the meaning of life, or how it should be lived, this "something" is awakened, and so they buy these things. It's the equivalent of buying the sea turtle necklace, i.e., what I wrote about the other day.
I have seen the same phenomenon in Amish Country in Ohio. People go there, they experience the pastoral beauty of the landscape, they see Amish people driving horse-drawn buggies, they eat "homestyle" food (just the way somebody way back on the family tree used to make), and they take home souvenirs of hand-made Amish apple butter that is never eaten and plaques that say "Home Is a Feeling" or some such phrase, that they hang on the family room wall to gather dust. They try to purchase a feeling, but of course, they can't. But it makes them feel good - temporarily.
 |
| It only took almost three weeks, but I finally had the idea yesterday morning to write this on the sand, bringing to mind how Mark had written "Mark loves Joseph" in the sand of the first beach at which we stopped on the California coast last fall |
As Mark and I commented, the sad thing about these purchases is that we typically don't really recognize what we're doing because we're not in touch with ourselves. We are, as Eckhart Tolle would say, being ruled by - kept on auto-pilot by - our Ego.
I think that travel presents a good opportunity to practice being mindful, to go beyond the egoic auto-pilot and to examine one's life and one's motives. Just the other day, for example, I was standing in a store looking at some wooden plates - sort of like the kind that were used at the luau a week ago. I thought it would be cool to bring a couple home for Mark and I to use, to remind us of the luau and our time here on Maui.
 |
| We took a walk yesterday afternoon along the rocks to the north of Little Beach. |
But then I thought how silly that was. First of all, I thought about why I really wanted the plates - to relive the luau, primarily. I didn't need these plates to relive an experience, as if plates could do that. Then I thought about using them over and over again back in our home in Utah, and how that would almost cheapen the memory I was trying to resurrect. Then, I thought of other, future, experiences: Would I want to bring home ceramic plates from Corsica because of a particularly memorable meal? How about pottery from Ohio? This is how bric-a-brac and "stuff" accumulate.
Going through this exercise in mindfulness helped me to distinguish between souvenirs and souvenirs - the French word for "memories." It also helps me to remember, when I see little plaques that say, "Life is Series of Moments" (or some such thing), that life is not about hanging signs on a wall about living moments, but about living moments.
 |
| Silhouetted against the rocks |
As I've been thinking about and writing this post over the past couple of days, a friend who has recently moved to a new place wrote to describe how she had yet once again been confronted with the issue of mementos. She is an only child, her parents are long departed, she has no children and is single.
 |
| Fishermen fishing off the rocks yesterday afternoon |
I see mementos as fundamentally different from souvenirs. Souvenirs have no meaning in and of themselves, whereas mementos usually have - horcrux-like - part of a loved one's soul encased in the object. And, like a horcrux, we can almost sense an absent person's presence, feel their love and ours for them, when we hold or see the memento.
Mark is a minimalist and definitely doesn't collect mementos. But there is a bottle of Starbucks iced mocha in our fridge at home. It has been there for five years. It was left behind the last time Mark's father and mother visited him. Mark's dad loved mochas. A year later after that visit, he died of Parkinson's Disease. Mark keeps that bottle of iced mocha, not because of what it is, but because of what it represents: it has been infused with precious memories of his now-departed father.
A souvenir can become a memento because of the meaning infused in the object, but mementos, it seems to me, cannot by their essential nature become bric-a-brac unless the people brought to mind by such objects were themselves bric-a-brac, objects in our lives from another time and place.
When it comes to mementos, the key, as I see it, once again boils down to mindfulness. As our friend wrote, "It's not the object [itself], but the now-absent attachment, the affection it represents, that ... is part of whom I am."
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