I like clean lines, clutter-free, knick knack free countertops and tables. My home is not a retail oddity shop. You cannot come to my house and peruse an eclectic mix of bizarre items from around the country. Functional items often cross the boundary into decorative, and this might be okay to some people, but I'm not trying to inflict my own personality onto the items I own. I don't buy things because they're "cute." I buy things that I need.
Maybe it's a function of testosterone, maybe it's a function of a fear of personal attachment, but for the most part, I can throw almost anything away. I think people, as a general rule, don't consider themselves enough. People don't often sit down, have some quiet time, and consider who they really are. We're on the go. We have things to do. We lose our sense of self awareness in our daily grind. Our personalities are there, buried in us. The fight to get out, though, has been lost. We stand by original convictions as if we still feel the same way. Case in point: when I was very young, I decided that yellow was my favorite color. Many years have passed, now, and when someone asks me what my favorite color is, I blankly, and without much thought, tell them it's yellow. I have never revisited this stance and I am comfortable with the color choice of my six year old self. I'm so comfortable with it, that I have a hard time revisiting my original conviction and I'm not really open to change it. It's been yellow for so long, I feel that I might lose a little piece of who I am if I just up and abandon poor yellow. And then where would yellow be? Out on the streets, tossed aside like a used diaper in the trash! We've been through a lot together, me and yellow. How could I ever abandon you? This may be an extreme explanation, but it illustrates the attachments we feel towards things. And that's not even a physical thing, it's a concept. Sorry, yellow, it's time for you to get evaluated. People change. It's not you, it's me.
I'm not saying that I hold absolutely zero sentimentality. I like to look at old pictures, I feel connections to things I've had for long periods of time, and I have certain books that I just can't simply give away or throw out. What I'm saying is in those rare times when we make a decision to like something, when we evaluate how we feel about something and respond according to that decision, we very rarely look back and reevaluate. Once the decision is made, we take for granted that we will always feel the same. We take comfort in never having to analyze that feeling again and years pass as we blindly assume that once we like something, we'll always like it.
Sometimes, I make a snap judgement to throw something away that I don't think I want to throw away. And it's hard. But once it's in the trash, I move on and rarely ever think of it again. Just recently, I was cleaning out my garage. In there, I found an old beat up lamp, with no shade, in the shap of a koala. The koala on the base of the lamp was a stuffed animal sort of thing, fluffy, hair matted down. The lamp was not mine, it was my wife's and she had had it for as long as I can remember, probably before we had even known each other. But I was cleaning out the garage. I couldn't remember the last time we even attempted to plug it in. Into the trash! I continued cleaning out the garage, but luckily (and as an act of sheer self preservation), I got into that rare mindset of reevaluating my initial feelings. Who am I, I thought, to inflict my personal feelings about keeping sentimental things onto my wife? I thought about it for a while before I pulled it back out of the trash can. Who knows what kind of memories this item holds for her? Who knows what memories she would forever lose because this lamp was not here to remind her of them? It was not my place, and I overstepped the boundary of respect for her belongings, assuming that she could have the same sense of disconnect that I have.
All of this begs the question: Are we the sum of our belongings? In a way, the answer is yes. We acquire things and we project memories onto them. We see an item and are reminded of a certain time and place, a situation, a smell, a feeling. If not for the item, the memory inspired by the item, while not completely lost, will dull with the inactivity of thought. These items bring it back, remind us of the memory, and repetition always equals retention.
So what, exactly, am I advocating here? It seems as though I'm contradicting myself. Throw it away, keep it for the memory it reminds you of...
I'm saying that we are human beings, with thoughts and feelings and personalities. We are unique and diverse. I'm saying use the power of thought. Don't blindly accept something just because it always was. Reevaluate. Hold yourself to a higher standard of thought and self awareness. Try to understand how and why you feel a certain way. It's easy to forget it in the mundane course of everyday life, but one day you'll wake up, and years will have passed. It is the difference between letting things happen to you and making things happen for you.
And come back yellow, I miss you already!
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