I have a friend who is in the process of downsizing his home and moving into an independent living facility. I think about when it’s my time to do that, and how hard it must be to part with the majority of your lifetime possessions. I’m reluctant to even get rid of my enrollment materials that I haven’t needed in a decade. How do you say goodbye to sentimental treasures?
I read a passage in A Gentleman in Moscow that resonated:
“From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family…But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu…For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity — all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance.”
I look around my house and see treasures that have meaning only to me; things that could easily be tossed by someone cleaning out my home, but that I value. How do we get so attached to physical objects?
I was reminded of a passage from Gift from the Sea where the author spends a week at the ocean and collects shells on each of her walks. As she prepares to leave, she notes:
“One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can only collect a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few…For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms.”
Whether they be sentimental, valuable, or practical, in the end, things are just things. Create some space in your life to enjoy relationships, nature, and the intangible pleasures, rather than accumulating more “stuff.”
Source: A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, 2016, p. 14 and Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindburgh, 1955, p. 114.
