The Value of Experiences Over Possessions

Motherhood is a wild mix of love, exhaustion, guilt, and stress, with moments of pure awe and joy sprinkled in between. It’s a constant balancing act—how to do right by myself, while being everything my children need me to be. Sometimes I wonder how we humans survive with so many complex emotions running through us all at once!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the life I’m leading. How it affects me, how it affects others, and, most of all, how it affects my children. I find myself questioning how the choices I make now will shape the lives they lead later. The pressure to be “great” for them can feel overwhelming at times.

Right now, we live in a town—an urban place I never imagined calling home. I dream of a rural life with a large garden, mature trees, and a vegetable patch where my children could run wild in wellies, their laughter echoing through the air. I imagine it like the Von Trapp family, only with less singing and more dirt. But by the time we get that home, my children may be teenagers who prefer the indoors. So, for now, I take them to the beach, to the hills, and anywhere in nature I can find. It’s my happy place, and bonus, I don’t have to clean the house after a day at the beach!

As I start to think more seriously about travel as a family, I can’t help but wonder about the kinds of experiences I want my children to have. The world we live in today often makes us feel like we can have it all, but the truth is, for most of us, we can’t. To get what we want, sacrifices have to be made, and hard work is often involved. Yet, in all of this striving, I feel the importance of instilling memories and moments of wonder in my children, rather than focusing solely on possessions.

I was on a retreat in the Lake District, and one thing that stuck with me was the way the guests would swim every morning to a tiny island off the shore. It wasn’t far, but there was something magical about it. The excitement, the adventure of swimming out to an island—what is it about that? Even as adults, they were giddy with joy. They’d swim out, walk around the island, wave back to shore, and swim back. That sense of exploration, that pure, unfiltered joy—so inherent in children—is still alive in us, even as adults. And yet, in a world where everything is made so easy for us, it can get lost in the shuffle of daily life. We no longer have to “explore” in the same way we did before.

This got me thinking about my dream home—one day, I picture that home with a beautiful kitchen with a handcrafted island unit. This piece of furniture has a perfect granite surface with smooth corners, sparkling taps, and four wooden stools along the side for my children to sit at while we cook together. I get giddy just imagining it. But then I pause and ask myself, “How can I justify spending so much money on something like that?” The truth is, as they grow older, they won’t remember that kitchen island, or what the house looked like. They won’t remember the things, the possessions we collected. What they will remember is the adventures, the first time we swam out to that island together—the shared experience, the laughter, the joy.

In a world that often places so much emphasis on what we have, I’m starting to think we need to focus more on what we experience. Experiences—whether it’s the excitement of an impromptu adventure or the joy of being together in nature—are what shape our memories and what we carry with us for the rest of our lives. And those are the things that our children will carry with them too.

So, the next time I’m tempted to focus on acquiring another “thing,” I’ll remind myself: it’s not the stuff that matters. It’s the memories, the moments of wonder, and the experiences we share that will last a lifetime.

What memories are you creating today?