Scraps
Consider this an amuse-bouche.
.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, an amuse-bouche is a small bite served before a meal, meant to give you a taste of what’s coming without giving away the whole thing.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been excavating something in my own life that I’ve started calling “Scraps.” There is already a much larger story forming around it.
This is one small bite.
Several years ago, in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, I finished a project and decided to reward myself with one week on the sunny Gulf Coast of Florida. I found one of those inexpensive snowbird flights designed to transport frozen Midwesterners somewhere warm, booked an Airbnb, and prepared to escape.
Then the airline wanted $150 round trip for my luggage.
That wasn’t going to happen.
There were several things operating underneath that decision. I was accustomed to being extremely frugal, and although I had just finished a project, I didn’t know where the next one was coming from. The airline’s baggage fees seemed ridiculous.
There was also a rebellious part of me that enjoyed figuring out how to beat systems I thought were preposterous. I would rather keep the $150 and spend some of it eating great food in Florida.
I thought I could pull it off.
The airline allowed one personal item, so I stuffed a purse with a few clothes and hygiene products.
Then I turned myself into luggage.
Cargo pants went on over cargo shorts, every available pocket got filled with things I needed for the week, and approximately five or six layers of clothing went onto my body so I could travel from a Wisconsin winter to Florida and back without paying the baggage fee.
I looked like a puffy snowman.
And I was rather proud of myself.
In fact, I bragged to my family about what I had figured out. Look what I can pull off. See how resourceful I am—I saved $150.
Never mind that getting through an airport and sitting on an airplane wearing most of your vacation wardrobe while your cargo pockets are heavy laden with belongings is extremely uncomfortable.
As far as I was concerned, I had won.
Or at least that was how I valued the transaction at the time.
The return flight is where this story becomes considerably more outrageous. What happened during the week in between makes the snowman episode look almost reasonable.
I’m not telling you that part yet. You’ll have to wait for the first book.
For years, I would have told this as a funny story about how resourceful I was. And that is true. Resourcefulness has taken me around the world and gotten me out of situations that probably should have been impossible.
Lately, though, I’ve been looking at the same story through a different lens.
Scraps.
Traveling inexpensively or refusing to pay an irritating airline fee doesn’t mean someone is living on scraps. Neither does the amount of money involved determine whether something qualifies.
Scraps isn’t really about quantity. Scraps is about valuation.
What do I value, and how does the way I allocate my life reflect those values? How much do my choices reveal about what I believe is available to me, what I’m willing to receive, and the exchanges I’m willing to make? Most interesting to me is whether those are still trades I consciously choose.
I had given myself a week in Florida as a reward, yet before I even left Wisconsin I was exchanging some of the comfort of that experience to preserve $150.
That exchange has become much more interesting to me than the money itself.
Once I started looking for Scraps, I realized how many forms they can take.
A person can have plenty of money and scraps of time to do what they actually want with their life, while another can have enormous freedom with their time and very little financial margin. Scraps can show up in sleep, health, affection, appreciation, autonomy, pleasure, creative attention, respect or rest.
None of those things can be measured from the outside. Ten minutes devoted intentionally to something that matters may be completely fulfilling, while hours spent somewhere else may feel profoundly misaligned. What constitutes enough is personal.
Then I discovered another layer: Where am I not only accepting scraps, but giving them?
Maybe the scraps are the care, pleasure, movement, rest or respect I give myself. Maybe work that matters to me gets whatever attention happens to remain after everything else has eaten first.
And then there are other people.
Am I asking for someone’s full attention while giving them scraps of mine? Do people I say matter to me receive scraps of my presence, affection, appreciation or respect?
Suddenly, that mirror reflects a whole lot more.
I don’t think the answer is that we should demand more of everything. I’m highly interested in whether the way I allocate my life actually reflects what I say I value.
Seeing a pattern doesn’t obligate me to condemn it. It gives me something far more useful: the ability to examine whether I still choose it.
That is one reason this particular rabbit hole has felt so liberating.
Looking back at the woman boarding that snowbird flight dressed like Frosty, pockets bulging, delighted that she had outsmarted the airline, I understand her with tremendous affection.
She was extraordinarily resourceful while also showing me something I wouldn’t understand until years later.
Scraps has earned its way into my first book. There is much more to both the Florida story and this inquiry than I’m going to give away here.
This is only the amuse-bouche…
Read The Next One: THE DANGEROUS CHIP ON MY SHOULDER →
PLAY IN THE LIVING LAB →
ENJOY THE FULL LIBRARY:
The Dangerous Chip On My Shoulder
Why Do Smart People Stay Stuck?
I Threw Away Every Medal I Ever Earned
Instead Of A Promotion, I Got Fired
I Ran An Experiment With The Universe
People MisJudge High Performers
The Cost Of Other People’s Opinions Of You
Some books are discovered after they’re published.
This one can be experienced while it’s still unfolding.
What began with deep self-inquiry became the Courageous Heart Expedition—and now my first book. Stories, films, photographs, reflections and discoveries are coming together as the work continues to unfold. You’re invited to explore what I’m creating and find your way in.
My Latest…
The Living Lab
Life is a lab. It’s always open.
How much of your life did you actually choose?
Most of us inherit far more than we realize—beliefs, identities, fears, and subconscious programming that control how we see ourselves.
The Living Lab is an ongoing exploration of what we discover when we question what we’ve been taught, challenge the ego, examine our conditioning, and experiment with different ways of being.
Because once you see what you didn’t choose, you get to decide what comes next.
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