The first time I was gearing up for ultralight backpacking, I became obsessed with the grams and ounces. Any idea I found where I could shave off weight felt like a creative orgasm as I was reaching for that imaginary ultralight perfection. This is a necessary rite of passage. Because any transformation always starts by breaking down everything you believe.
In martial arts there’s a philosophy that mastery always returns to the basics. The same principle applies when starting a journey of shedding the excess in our lives. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my obsession with decreasing the base weight was actually a yearning to purify my mind and soul. It made me ponder about things I really need to survive comfortably. I’ve since found that the “Goldilocks” moral applied to what I was seeking. I needed to try everything before deciding what works for me. I started by taking everything away and slowly start adding based on my experience. Everyone has different ways of seeing the world and that reflects in our gear.
By pursuing the bottomless ultralight perfection, I got lost in the path of becoming super ultralight. Anything in excess always becomes the opposite. For example, as I got my base weight under 10 lbs, I kept looking for more ways to cut weight. But this is a trick. By pursuing even lighter weight, I start to spend excessively as well. I start to push the boundaries of safety and really undermining the power of nature. I began to compare myself to others and this comparison ruined my peace of mind. There’s always someone more ultralight than you. I had to remember that this is not a competition. It’s about finding your center and aligning it with nature. Ultralight is just a tool, it is not who were are. We are nature people.
Zen is simplicity. It’s a more Eastern philosophy and feeling based. The goal is using simplicity to free up mental resources and creating the conditions for internal peace. Imagine your physical energy as the percentage of battery on your smartphone. What happens when you have all those apps running in the background? How often are you receiving emails, notifications, text messages, advertising. It drains your time, attention, and energy. You find yourself looking for “quick charges” like coffee or Adderall. What these do is definitely give you a quick artificial charge to keep going but the metaphorical ‘battery life’ is shortened. These habits can shorten our lives. The debt for borrowing energy is paid with our future selves through our livelihood, sleep, and manifesting through anxiety. So I try to keep things simple. Simple investment in bitcoin. Simple workout routine. Simple running schedule. Simple to-do lists of 2-3 items per day. I have come to love simple things. I want to rethink every habit and product in our lives and simplify them. I decided to start with ultralight backpacking as it aligns with this value.
Minimalism is reduction of excess. The excess may come in the form of: possessions, bills, stressors, relationships, and even beliefs that are not directly contributing to the life you want to live. It’s different from Zen because its focus on the modern lifestyle. It’s a more Western philosophy and logic based in my opinion. There are detailed books and outlines that teach you how to become a minimalist and I’m actually listening to a book about it now: Minimalism by Ryan Nicodermus & Joshua Fields Millburn. I didn’t even know I had minimalist ideas until I started hearing their book. It’s a lifestyle I’m letting simmer for awhile to see how I want to apply it to my life.
So what is Ultralight Ideas about? Ultralight Ideas is if Zen and Minimalism had a baby and that baby was raised by Elon Musk. Regardless of how we may feel about him, we can’t ignore how he found markets that were outdated and disrupted them. At SpaceX, they found the NASA rockets were over-engineered, overpriced, and excessive. They trimmed the fat, reimagined space launches, and made it cheap to fly satellites into space. What this brand aims to do is similar: make things more accessible, cheaper, lighter, simpler, and with all the thinking done. These ideas will eventually grow beyond backpacking, but we’re starting with you first. Cheers.