Discardia_ More Life, Less Stuff - Dinah Sanders [56]
Physical manifestations of past moments of connectedness are a good thing, yes. You should surround yourself with what makes you remember that you are liked and loved. However, look harder and see how many things you keep out of a sense of duty to that ideal and for no other reason—things that are neither beautiful nor useful, take up space, need to be moved and cleaned, and slowly become emotionally dull, and yet are not cast off.
How many things in your house purely represent your affection for someone but which, as objects, you would otherwise not choose to have? That slightly tacky jewelry from your deceased great-aunt that you never wear but which you wouldn’t want to hurt her posthumous feelings by donating to charity? The vaguely comical refrigerator magnet you received as a farewell present from your favorite coworker at your job before last, which he’s never seen again since he’s never been to your house and you haven’t been in touch for months anyhow?
We fear that by rejecting the thing, we reject the person. We worry that parting with the physical reminder will erase the memory and the emotion.
Hesitating to part with unwanted things out of an impulse to be kind makes even less sense when we relate to our belongings as though they could be emotionally wounded by our behavior. It doesn’t matter to a chair whether you’ve had it for 10 days or 10 years. It won’t care if you give it away. If you’ve stopped caring about it, there’s no reason not to act on that change. Who are you worried about offending? In the words of the wonderful Ikea ad by Spike Jonze, “Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because you’re crazy. It has no feelings—and the new one is much better.”
Let it go.
There are ways to remember other than bearing all these objects around with us like Marley’s chains. It’s fine—even commendable—to part with this physical stuff. Even good stuff can move on to make room for the life you're living now or want to be living in the future.
Even the sweetest stuff can find a new home
Don't assume that there is a direct correlation between unwillingness to let something go and the intensity of the memories it evokes. When I was helping my parents move out of the house in which I’d grown up, I opened a door into an attic room, saw the object in front of me, and was hit full force by a vivid, emotional memory.
I'm four. My mother is holding me in her arms rocking me slowly in a white, wooden rocking chair. She is singing a lullaby. I am hearing the lullaby and feeling the safeness of her loving arms. I am feeling the gentle sway of the movement of the chair lulling me down comfortably.
I am standing, leaning forward with the attic door latch in my right hand, looking at the white rocking chair a few feet in front of me. That object had some mighty strong mojo, no doubt about it. I don't remember now if I cried; I suspect that I did as I rocked in that lovely, sturdy, old chair. Of all the things in that house, you would think that the chair would be most likely to be sitting in my home now, but it's not. That chair needs to rock babies to sleep. That chair needs to hold little children with their fingers in their mouths listening to fairy tales.
I'd already decided years ago not to have kids, which was perhaps the most significant Discardian choice of my life for its impact on my carbon footprint as well as the space it’s created for other opportunities. Because of this decision, I knew the chair needed to be with someone else. I gave it to friends, who were pregnant with their first child, so that it could serve at least one more generation and create happy childhood memories. Perhaps if I'd taken the chair my memories would have become diluted. Maybe sometimes the most emotionally significant things need to be preserved in our hearts rather than in our homes.
Send even the sentimental stuff on to a new home when the time comes. This “Free if you come and get it” offer appeared on my old company's community email list, which