Whether due to circumstance or nature, I cannot say for sure, but I am a big believer in ‘traveling light’. I feel better when I shed the extra baggage that I – like you – pick up along the path of life. Material possessions, habits, toxins, emotions – all can become weights that hold us down.
I have moved residences umpteen times in my life (I shudder to ponder the actual number), and thus have been forced, on a semi-regular basis, to leave old, unused things behind. And as I have lived in small city apartments for most of the past 5 years, space limitations have further encouraged me to banish the types of possessions that people often hang on to: files, papers, jackets, broken furniture, dishes, whatever.
So it is with regularity that I troll the corners of my closet, ‘junk drawers’, or beneath my sofas, looking for those objects which no longer belong in my home. Often, it is hard to make the decision to discard an old hat, pair of shoes, or towel. “Hey, I might use that if (fill in the circumstance).” Of course, that never happens, and one just ends up with the same unused crap six months later.
Knowing this reality, I find it fairly easy to let go of the unused, or even minimally used bags of things that I compile every couple of months. Usually I take them to Goodwill, sometimes I just place them on the sidewalk (goodbye, crappy microwave!), and I have even been known to throw the junk in the garbage can (slightly guilty about that maneuver). Afterwards, though, I always feel better: lighter, more comfortable, more relaxed. I even sleep better.
Why is this? I don’t really know. Perhaps it provides balance to the more common behavior (consumption) that I engage in pretty much daily. Maybe it is a symbolic gesture that reinforces the emotional cleansing we also require. Or could it just be that my apartment feels more organized, less chaotic, and less cluttered than it did moments before. I think it is all of these things. But regardless, the good feeling reinforces the value of the behavior, which is why these periodic purges are now just part of my life, whether I’m moving or not.
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A favorite quote, from a speech given by Yoko Ono in 1966:
I think it is nice to abandon what you have as much as possible, as many mental possessions as the physical ones, as they clutter your mind. It is nice to maintain poverty of environment, sound’ thinkina and belief. It is nice to keep oneself small, like a grain of rice, instead of expanding. Make yourself dispensable, like paper. See little’ hear little, and think little.
