The Art of Not Owning Stuff

I don’t know how to break this to you gently. I am a 52 year-old, educated and employed father of two — and yet I don’t own anything.

At least not anything that would cause society to smile down upon me. I rent my apartment here in Copenhagen and own no property elsewhere. If I think about my most valuable possessions, it would be a list comprised of bikes and camera equipment. That’s about it.

Two quotes have raised their finger-pointy heads once again over the past month or so. The quote, “A man who, beyond the age of twenty-six, finds himself on a bus can count himself a failure” was attributed to Margaret Thatcher.

The other is from David Lloyd George (I had to google him), who grumbled that, “A young man who isn’t a socialist doesn’t have a heart. An old man who is a socialist doesn’t have a head.” Well, there’s little ol’ ME labelled as a headless public transport user — although in my own city of Copenhagen, I prefer to ride a bike like almost everyone else. Luckily, staid and stuffy British politicians have never been the primary lighthouses for me on my life’s journey.

I am well aware that, in the eyes of many of my contemporaries, I am letting the team down. I have failed miserably at fulfilling the economic expectations of human society that were spawned by the Agricultural Revolution. Let alone my…