A few years ago, Valentine's little stuffed hedgehog and the little cage/box Auntie had made for him disappeared from his locker at school. Try as I might, I can't come up with an innocent explanation— especially since we went right back to his school and searched diligently for it the afternoon it disappeared.
It is very vexing when such things happen.
Perhaps that is why some religions encourage their devotees to divorce themselves from worldly goods. When we invest a piece of ourselves in a thing, no matter how intrinsically valuable, or how cute and fuzzy it is, we give that thing power over us. Power to affect our feelings, power to disappoint us by breaking, vanishing into the æther, or being stolen. Material goods are tied to time with its inevitable destruction.
Several years ago, I was involved in a writing project where the main characters were as near to immortal as makes no difference. One of the members of the project raised the question: When people outlive their creations, when they see tapestries they wove or furniture they built rotting away over the centuries, what do they do? Do they replace the items lost to time or do they move on? In part the answer depended on the character, and I suspect, the character’s creator. Some characters were of the type to re-create ‘lost works’ to maintain their own personal continuity, while others had no interest in re-creating the past when they were engaged in new work.
A few weeks after the “Hedgehog Incident” Valentine’s friend and classmate brought in a hedgehog that she had and insisted on giving it to Valentine. We talked to her mom to make sure it was okay with the mom and found out the whole thing had been the little girl’s idea. Valentine still has “Hedgie” and it remains one of the stuffed animals he plays with often– in spite of newcomers that have arrived since then.
Material things can serve to remind us of events, relationships, and feelings. It is difficult to divorce ourselves from physical objects, no matter how useless they may seem, when so much of our sensory input comes from the physical world of touch and smell. However, there can come a time when the things we value begin to take over. Things need space and maintenance to survive over time and when more and more of a person’s energy is devoted to making sure the things have a home, it is sometimes at the expense of other parts of that person’s life.
How can we find the right balance between divorcing ourselves from material goods– in the hopes of freeing up mental real estate for other purposes— and being devoured by the things that help us remember who we are and where we came from?
The following are some things that I try to keep in mind when I have the urge to save every paper that Valentine (my son) ever wrote on:
— Recycle early and often. I bring the mail in, stand by the recycle bin and toss anything that is not a bill, a letter, or a catalogue that I requested (usually activity schedules for various parks/rec. events close to us).
— Minimize what comes in to the house. We receive three magazine subscriptions, total. We also have a stock of postcards preprinted to send to catalogue mailers asking to be taken off their mailing lists. After several years of doing this (and signing up for various “don’t mail me stuff” lists) we get very little junk mail.
— Allow yourself to make mistakes in how much you get rid of. Packrats want to save everything against a day when they might need it. It only takes one or two times per year of having ‘just the right thing’ to justify filling an entire basement with string. I try to go the other way and get rid of more than I think is wise. Occasionally it has come back to haunt me, but when it does I remind myself of what it costs to store an item (either in terms of money or in terms of not being able to store something else that I would use more), shrug my shoulders and move on.
— Prioritize. Most folks have only so much storage space and don’t have room to store twenty different collections plus have room to move in their house. What is important to you? In my case, I have made storage space available for books, family heirlooms, and dishes. This is passive storage, rather than things that are actively used on a daily basis.
— Make room for you. All of your stuff is meaningless without you. Think about how you would like to use your space, remember what you decided to give priority to, and ruthlessly purge the rest.
Physical objects are important. They help us remember who we were and, more importantly to my mind, how we felt during those times. My own advice and experience come down to: pick the best of the past, ditch the rest, and make room for the future.