How to Live Out of a Backpack: Mentality

This is a series of posts about ‘how to live out of a backpack’ as a vagabond, minimalist, nomad, expat, traveler or for everyday life as a lifestyle.

MENTALITY //

That saying “I live out of my suitcase” is derived from people who have to travel frequently for work. They stay at hotels for a couple of days or longer then return home until work calls on them again.

That’s just a crazy commute and not actually living out of a suitcase. Their “life” isn’t in their suitcase as the contents are just usually a variation of a short vacation packing list. The mentality is completely different.

There’s business and then there’s nomadic.

To a nomad, our suitcase or in this case backpack, is our “life” in the same way a house is to most other people.

If you think of it as a survival kit, our backpack and contents is the preparation of life in general. Not a specific or exigent event, such as a holiday or disaster.

Living out of a backpack means (in varying degrees) that all your possessions are usually on your person or close by to the extent that everything can be packed up and taken with you at a moment’s notice.

While important as utilities of living, the very nature of a nomadic life is minimalism with the departure of materialism .

So our possessions are minimized by design and necessity but our functionality is maximized.

This gives us immense literal and figurative freedom compared to people who have to be at specific locations at specific times to do specific tasks to function in their specific lives. Being itinerant and flexible however, changes or even enhances our mentality.

It makes us responsibly free spirited, ethically hedonistic, educationally explorative and naturally adventurous. Furthermore, it teaches us to live with less and appreciate the things we already have.

It’s lifestyle exercising and dieting.

To live out of a backpack, you must be prepared to start an unorthodox lifestyle. To change your mentality of what “normal” life is and how its supposed to be lived.

As adults, it’s hard to grasp a completely different way of living than what we’ve known since birth. Difficulty of adjusting, fear of change and the unknown with the uncertainty of the outcome – grown-up issues.

Embrace your inner child and be fearless, tenacious and most of all curious. That’s the vagabonding way.

How to Live Out of a Backpack: Mentality