nothingness

As I was sitting in my room one day, I thought of how everything around us is man-made. You might reply with: "Oh yes, obviously", but the way we surround ourselves with things, and even our eagerness to build and make things, and if not, buy things is to some extent actually crazy. It is with our eagerness to make and build things that we found civilizations. And almost all of us cherish the concept of civilization. But sometimes where civilization brings us, imho, a little too much. As someone who had to move things back and forth for 4 years, at some point I couldn't help but ask myself: "Do I really need this much stuff?" I moved to the US and I bought things to decorate my room and then I would move back home and  buy clothes and bring even more stuff back with me to the US. That meant I would have to carry even more stuff when I come back home to Istanbul. The burden of carrying all my stuff with me back and forth really made itself obvious when I had to go back home from England and I had almost 4 suitcases of stuff when I was only allowed to carry 2 with me. A few weeks before I was to move to Turkey from England I watched the movie 'Up in the Air' with my roommates and remembered how George Clooney's character gave seminars on how to own only a carry-on size bag much of stuff. To me, that's something impossible to accomplish. However, I am also now more careful not to clutter my life with stuff I don't necessarily need. Remember the aphorism by the charismatic Tyler Durden of Fight Club: "The things you own end up owning you." And to some extent, this is very true in our culture. Fashion and trendiness is all about making judgements about a person by evaluating what they wear. We also tend to feel an affinity towards people who shop from the same places as us, or wear similar clothes to what we wear and use similar gadgets to what we use. I'm not saying I don't engage in any of these behaviors, but when I realize that I do, I tend to come to the conclusion that it's quite unnecessary.

Before we started building and making things like we will never be satisfied, there was the nothingness of nature. I found a photography blog with some photos of 'nothingness'. And here are two that are my favorites. I like these two because there is nothing in them that are man-made (like roads, houses, etc.) and no artifacts.

Here is the link to the website where I found them, if you want to look at more photos: http://www.photographyblogger.net/29-pictures-of-nothingness/ Also, there is a little story, which I heard/read a couple times before, about a fisherman and a businessman on the website that makes a nice point for our work- and stuff-cluttered lives.