The Things of Our Lives

When I was little, coloring books were still considered creative entertainment for children and I received great praise for a picture of a person that I colored in at the age of four or five. I may still have it in the folder of mementos that my mother remanded to my care some years ago as she was lightening her load (and increasing mine.)

These objects of the past have a mysterious claim on us—the things we created and the pictures of who we were—the certificates of achievement or graduation—the faded clipping from local newspapers from when our name or picture appeared. Then there are the hundreds of beautiful and unique objects that we have gathered along the way—objects found or purchased in exotic locations or given to us at significant moments. Not to mention the innumerable file folders from projects and workshops. A lifetime recorded in the precious and sometimes overwhelming detritus of things that surround us.

It used to be my job to work with our daughter cleaning her room. I think this was because her tendency toward randomness was directly inherited through me, so the role of clean-up supervisor was both punishment and matching my extended study of disorder with her need for support in the midst of a chaotic room full of her things. This was before Marie Kondo had taught us about sensing what ‘sparks joy’ but long after my mother used to lie on my bed when I was growing up, supporting me with encouragement and suggestions while I cleaned my room every nine months whether it needed it or not.

With our young daughter, and as I recall this worked all the way up through high school, I used to bring three bags because there were four categories of things. The first category was things to keep and they had to find a home in a drawer or closet, or on a shelf or bookcase. The next category was the bag for the things that were going to be thrown away. Category three was the bag for the things that were no longer wanted but had enough remaining life and value to be worthy of being given away. But it was the fourth category which was the most helpful—the black bag that contained things that were to precious to release, but not important enough to find a place for. By the time we finished, this bag was almost always the largest one and was carefully labeled with the day’s date and stored up in the attic. The rule was that anything that she wanted from this bag she was welcome to get, but that after six months, the bag would be thrown or given away.

What my system had in common with Marie’s (she encourages her clients to call her by her first name) system was the reliance on cognitive overload. Marie recommends going through your things one category at a time. You begin with your clothes. Every article of clothing you own gets put in a big pile on your bed. You then pick up each shirt, sock, sweater, scarf, etc and hold it for a second to see if it ‘sparks joy.’ My theory is that in this decision-making process, as in the four-category process I used with my daughter, the endless pile of stuff and the repeated decision-making eventually weakens the brain’s attachment muscle and it becomes easier to let things go.

Over the years that my daughter and I brought bags of questionable stuff up to the attic, I never remember one instance of her going up to get something. The things she could barely stand not to have in her room one day, were forgotten the next as the new things of life easily filled in available space in her room and in her mind.

The line drawing picture I colored in that my mother saved was carefully done—not a small accomplishment for little hands holding crayons. But the remarkable thing to my mother was that I had used color with no regard for realism. The face was purple and the shirt yellow and the hands red. She thought this was wonderfully precious, that I hadn’t yet realized the correspondence of the pictures to real life. I think that I was, like Matisse, simply more focused on the reality of the paper and the color than on the image it was supposed to be representing.

All this holding on and letting go is alive for me this morning as Melissa and I continue our slow but definite move from the Temple to a small nearby cottage. There are closets to be excavated, file cabinets of a decade of work and play to winnow through and the challenging opportunity to release the accumulated things of our life as we lighten our load in preparation for the new life (and death) that is coming.