July 25th, 2008
I’m Giving Away Everything I Own, to Five People, Instead of One
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Ever since I announced that I’m giving away everything I own to one lucky reader of my blog, both friends and strangers have been asking me questions I have no easy answers for –
Why are you giving away everything you own, when you’ll be back in nine months? Won’t you want it all back when you return?
How will you decide who has the greatest need for your belongings? Why don’t you give it away to an orphanage or an old age home instead?
Would you have given everything away if you were not going away for nine months, or, if you were not writing a book?
So, instead of giving you answers I don’t have, let me share a snapshot of what I was thinking before I made my announcement.
We derive our identity (and our happiness) basically in four ways — from the things we own, from the experiences we have, from the people we relate to, and from the meaning we create. These four elements are arranged in a “hierarchy of identities” that is not only different for each one of us, but also changes for each one of us over time.
When I passed out of IIM Bangalore six years back, and had some money for the first time, buying and owning things were important to me, if only to prove to myself that I could afford to. So, I set up a full household, acquired costly tastes, ate out five nights a week, and played host the other two nights. Basically, I spent the next six years spending as much money as I could, to make up for not having enough in the previous twenty one years.
Then, one day, I realized that I had run that race (with myself) and it had left me tired. I had already bought all the things and experiences I wanted, and even some I didn’t really want. I couldn’t really buy what I wanted anymore, because the things I wanted now could not be bought. My hierarchy of identities had changed; creating meaning, relating to people, and having life-changing experiences were more important to me now than owning things. So, I decided to stop buying things I didn’t need, go off consumption for a year, in the hope that a year of austerity would cleanse my soul.
Then, three and a half months into my experiment, I realized that it was not enough to not buy things that I didn’t need, when I already owned so many things that I didn’t need. So, I decided to keep only the things that I need and give away everything else.
I don’t know if I would have done it if I wasn’t going away for nine months. I don’t know if I would have done it if I wasn’t writing a book about my experiences. I don’t even know if I’ll want it all back when I return, nine months later.
What I do know is that my decision to give away my belongings was not driven by the desire to help someone else, the instinct for charity; it was driven, instead, by the desire to find myself, and maybe, by the instinct for whimsy.
Sometimes, I grow my hair, or my beard, to see who I become. This time, I’m giving away my belongings, to see who I become, when I don’t have my job/ house/ furniture/ bar/ books/ DVDs (my friend Kanishka, who has the gift for quotes, told me that, if I give away everything I own, I’ll basically become my blog).
So, my giving away my belongings is not an act of philanthropy, it is an act of peeling off layers in my onion-like identity. Mixing the two will only take away from both acts, make them both smaller than they ought to be.
As I read and re-read the twenty one stories that people have shared with me in response to my post, I didn’t really think about whose need was the greatest. What I’m offering is too little to really change someone’s life and, in any case, if I really wanted to find the person with the greatest need, I should have walked down to a slum near my house, instead of asking people to share their stories with me online.
So, instead of asking myself whose need was the greatest, I asked myself whose story appealed to me the most.
It turned out that the stories that appealed to me most included the MBA who is spending all his savings on a solar energy startup (Gurudatt), two newly-wed couples who are setting up their households (Alok and his wife and Preethi and her husband), and two wordsmiths who probably wrote their pieces just in jest (Trilok and Nandita).
There are two common threads in all these five stories —
- None of them really need my stuff, so the “want” is greater than the “need”, and this is precisely what appealed to me the most.
- All of them want to use my stuff themselves, unlike others who want to either sell it off, or gift it to their families.
I’m gifting my stuff to five people, instead of one, because all of them get what they really want, and none of them is burdened with what they don’t need.
Gurudatt is in Gurgaon, but the other four are coming over to my house on Sunday to pick out what they want. Whatever is left, after they have taken what they want, I’ll gift to Joanna Buthello’s orphanage in Madh Island.
I know that it’s not the most obvious decision, and I know that it’s not going to be the most popular decision, but it’s a decision that comes closest to my original intent, and it’s the only decision I could make.
