How to Pack Your Existential Navigation Bundle
(For sensitive souls and fellow sailors in the sea of everyday entropy)
If I had to keep just one lesson from recent years, it would be this: travel light.
It’s taken me years—and a few existential crises—to sift through the countless things I’m passionate about.
After much sorting, discarding, restarting, and the occasional dramatic sigh, I’ve finally managed to distill the essentials into a small bundle I carry with me wherever I go.
So here it is: my personal kit for navigating existence.
It’s only mine, of course. But I hope it might inspire you to assemble your own, filled with ingredients only you can choose.
To help you pack yours, I suggest three magical questions (no wand required):
- Does it nourish me… or drain me?
- Could I live without it for more than a week?
- Does it give me a sense of wholeness (or at least that feeling you get when you find a matching pair of socks on a Monday morning)?
A Tale of Shakuhachi (bless you)
Everyone talks about the importance of breath.
Hardly anyone thinks to put it into practice: pick up a flute and just listen to what comes out of it.
I play the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute once used by Zen monks in pursuit of spiritual awakening.
Well, as for awakening, I’m still stuck somewhere between hitting snooze and tumbling out of bed, but one thing’s certain:
it’s a wonderful way to check the weather inside myself and know when full-blown storms are brewing — sometimes it even helps deflate them!
Playing the shakuhachi means getting acquainted with your breath. Not the one you wish you had, but the one that’s actually there, in the moment.
It’s like a martial art of self-kindness. You don’t fight it, you lean into it.
It might sound lofty… but breath rises from deep within us, so why wouldn’t it carry a few truths along the way?
For instance, all the things we are unknowingly brooding on, or simply processing beneath the rush of our busy lives.
It’s especially useful to me because I often struggle to identify what I am really feeling —you know, all those things buried underneath all the “shoulds” and expectations.
The shakuhachi changed that.
I even started a YouTube channel to document the journey.
Imagine that.
A Pencil for Spontaneous Expression
A pencil might seem like a humble thing.
But it taught me something essential:
when you love doing something, do it for yourself.
- Not so it will be “well done”.
- Not for validation.
- Just because it lights up your heart.
A shout-out here to Max, Serge, and Jérôme, each of whom, in their own way, helped me recognise the beauty of raw, unfiltered aliveness.
Silence at the Bottom of Your Pockets
If you’re anything like me, your pockets probably hold a stone, a shell, or a scrap of bark picked up on a walk.
Maybe even a book, if your pockets are particularly ambitious.
These small objects have a quiet but powerful gift: they bring us back to ourselves through touch.
Over time, my bundle has evolved into a kind of anchoring toolkit.
These days, I never leave home without my survival kit:
- noise-cancelling headphones
- tinted glasses
- a scarf
- and a beanie or hat
Simple gear to soften sensory overload and build a little cocoon, even in the middle of chaos.
At first, it was a semi-conscious defence mechanism.
But eventually, I realised how much these objects helped me…and how vulnerable I felt without them.
Maybe you’ve got a few of your own, without even realising it.
Come to think of it… have you ever asked yourself?
If these thoughts resonated with you, you might enjoy wandering through the blog. That’s where I share what the flute is teaching me, the epiphanies I find in images, and the quiet art of living simply, like a hermit listening for true sound.
No mysteries, no grand conclusions. Just notes from the path.
Feel free to explore - take what speaks to you.