Why George Clooney Had It All Backward

Show of hands - who has seen Up In The Air with George Clooney? I was a bit late out of the starting blocks with this one and only caught it a few weeks ago. It's always nice to see George fluff about on screen (although scrubs will always suit you better, my dear) and I did get to fantasize about life in a hotel and meals cooked for me rather than by me for a change, but there was something about that movie that just didn't sit right with me.

Mr Yum plays Ryan Bingham, a no-nonsense, efficient sort of fellow who makes a crust flying across the country firing people on behalf of bosses who are too chicken to do it themselves.  He spends three quarters of every year in airports, airplanes or hotels and has honed his luggage-packing skills to a fine point. While on the road, Bingham supplements his income by giving motivational talks on removing dead weight to achieve simplicity and freedom.  Here's an excerpt from one of the talks Bingham gives:

How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to feel the straps on your shoulders. Feel 'em? Now I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life.

You start with the little things, the things on shelves and in drawers, the knick-knacks, the collectibles.

Feel the weight as that adds up.

Then you start adding larger stuff - clothes, table-top appliances, lamps, linens, your TV. The backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. And you go bigger.

Your couch, bed, your kitchen table. Stuff it all in there. Your car, get it in there. Your home, whether it's a studio apartment or a two bedroom house. I want you to stuff it all into that backpack.

Now try to walk. It's kind of hard, isn't it?

This is what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. We weigh ourselves down until we can't even move. And make no mistake...moving is living.

Now, I'm gonna set that backpack on fire. What do you want to take out of it?

Photos? Photos are for people who can't remember. Drink some ginkgo and let the photos burn.

In fact, let everything burn and imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing.

It's kind of exhilarating, isn't it?

Bingham's ethos on life appears to be "Don't get close to people because they weigh you down and stifle your ability to be free".  In fact, later in the movie he elaborates on his 'backpack' theory, switches personal items and furniture for people, and tells his audience humans aren't designed to be 'monogamous swans' when it comes to relationships with other people, but sharks.  Ultimately, the character realizes the flaws in this theory and begins to change his mindset, but the original speech (above, near the beginning of the movie) stuck in my mind for days.

If you had a house fire tomorrow, what are the items that you'd be truly devastated to lose?

I can literally count mine on one hand.

Nana's handmade quilts that she presented to each of the children? No, as special as they are, they can be replaced.  Our various electronic devices stuffed full of 'important' details, music, photos and little time-waster games? Of course not - they'd be inconvenient to lose, sure, but plastic and metal isn't flesh and blood.  No, there are very few items that I consider truly irreplaceable.

Human life. This is a given, obviously.  I don't care if I was showering, heard the fire alarm, and had to run out into the street as nekkid as the day I was born - I'm going to get my babies out first.

Photos. Digital copies of precious family memories will help heal the gaping wound losing everything else would bring.  You just can't replicate the look a photo captured on the face of your husband when each of your children were born, or the important family history contained in older images. So scan old photos and store them online or give copies of your disks to relatives to safeguard.

Letters. In this age of disposable communication (text messages and emails) the humble hand-written letter has become a virtual museum piece.  When my father was serving in Vietnam in 1971 he wrote letters home to his mother that she kept and passed back down to him, which then ended up with us kids, and eventually, will be passed on to our own children.  Not only were they precious to my Nana, but they illustrated a time in history my kids' generation are going to forget before too long, and this saddens me. Plus The Bearded Avenger and I wrote letters to each other while we were 'courting' (this was back in the days before the internet exploded) that, while hideously embarrassing to read back after 15 years and three kids together, are nevertheless extremely precious to me, and they could never be replaced. 

My wedding and engagement rings.  I know they are just jewellery. And I'm not even a jewellery kind of girl. And yes, exact replicas can be reproduced from photos. But it would not be the ring that my (then fiance) proposed to me with, or the ring that was blessed with our wedding vows.  Even renewing our vows with new rings wouldn't come close (I once left my engagement ring next to a sink in a public toilet in a shopping centre in a dodgy part of town - for several hours I was in tears, assuming it was lost forever.  Someone had turned it in to centre management.  If that person had left a name, I would have named my nextborn after him/her).

Charlie the Wonderdog. He's a part of our family.  He snores like a freight train, but he's quite useful for cuddles :)

Everything else can go.  I could live with no furniture, no bed linen, no dishes, no clothing.  Or rather, I could live with having to replace them from scratch. The last two lines from Clooney's character's speech are the most insightful of all. 

Imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing.  It's kind of exhilarating, isn't it?

Imagine being able to build a household up from scratch again.  Imagine only buying what experience has taught you a family truly needs, not what years of collecting and dragging those collections to various houses has given you.  Look around the room you're in right now.  I bet you can pinpoint a dozen items you no longer use regularly, things that just seem to take up space, or whose original purpose has long since been outgrown.

It's a lot easier to build from the ground up than to declutter and pare down, that's for sure.  How freeing it must be!  No agonising 'but Great Aunt Mildred gave us that!' decisions. No storing of unused things. Only enough dishes for one day at a time, plus a few pots to cook in.  No dozens of headless Barbies. Just enough clothing to meet your needs means laundry is now a breeze.  One set of sheets per bed that you wash and put back on the same day.  And when they wear out, you replace them.  Two towels per person.  One set of school uniforms.  Cleaning is a cake walk.  Organizing the house takes minutes, not hours.  Everything has a place, everything has a purpose.

Gives you the right kind of goosebumps, doesn't it?