Houses or Places

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This has been a long time coming, I have always been wanting to post about this but time doesn’t let me. Or at least, I don’t have enough time to sit and write for my very own blog.

In life, we are given options, some have more, some have less or even no options at all. In this post, I’d like to talk about Houses (buying something solid – a house, a car, a Louis Vuitton purse) or Places (buying experience – concerts, skydiving, traveling). This post is totally inspired by Derek Sivers – someone that I look up to as a role model. In this post, he said:

Wouldn’t it be more fun to never have to OWN anything, but to just have it when you need it?

I mean, of course, if you have billions of Rupiah, never mind US Dollar – it might be an exception where you can just buy anything you want and at the same time do all the experience. But for a lot of people – the middle class – including me, we have to choose.

For me, it has always been the latter instead of the former. Ever since I have been earning money on my own, I know how hard it is to do that hence I have to spend it on something that is truly meaningful to my life. I don’t know whether it’s because of my age or not but I’ve been traveling, I’ve been going to concerts (mostly kpop – yes),  and I definitely will go skydiving in the next couple of years.

Why you said? Why don’t you spend the money for fancy branded clothes and put a down payment on a car or something? I’d say things won’t affect your life, the time you feel happy owning an expensive thing is only when you’re planning to buy it, the time you actually buy it, and probably a little while after you buy it. As time passed, you will “adapt” with that expensive stuff and you know what? You will actually want something more, something new. It is a never-ending loop.

At the other hand, experiences actually shape your life. You see something that probably 99% other people in the whole world isn’t experiencing at that time. You are the few hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands that will remember this experience. Remember that Guns n Roses or L’arc~en~Ciel or So Nyuh Shi Dae concert? You’re gonna be able to tell that to your kids, your grandkids. Remember that time when you’re going to Sydney and playing on the Bondi Beach? Or when you’re eating on a roadside stall at Seoul, sipping soju and eating Ddukbokki? – all is something that you can people over and over again. Or if you’re lucky, it’s saved on a printed photo somewhere or on your Facebook so you can rem·i·nis·cence about those trips.

There has been a saying that if you want to change the world, while you’re young you should travel, you should see the world and realize that it’s not just as small as your city. There are tons of problems that this world are facing, and it is up to us, the people living on it, to do something about it.

So, do you prefer Houses? or Places?