Arriving home, I arrived home to about five boxes of stuff. Stuff from life in Japan. Stuff from life from university days. Stuff I had sent home during my journey. Photos, books, electronic stuff, shoes, a suit (I used to wear that every day), a guitar…

Before long, this stuff was strewn all over my bedroom. There was no order to my unpacking, nor any idea even why I was unpacking at all. All I wanted to do was to be with my precious stuff. My…precious…

But then I started to feel positively gluttenous. “Man I have so much stuff” I thought. “All of it has such intricate memories attached to it too…but oh so much stuff.”

It was enough to start getting me down. I mean, I lived out of bags that had a capacity of only 60 litres for 2 years! And here I am surrounded.

But things were quickly put into perspective when my sister-in-law took a glance into my room and said “That’s all you stuff?!” as if to say, “Is that all you’ve got?!”

I quickly realised that it’s all relative. “At least you can fit it all into one room,” my Mum commented as I was grieving over my horrid western cosumeristic materialistic hoarding tendencies.

I think she’s right. Balance is good. At least I can fit all my stuff into one room. It’s all about perspective.