The things that own you

My task over then next few weeks is to whittle away at my worldly possessions in preparation for moving into even smaller space. It's not a chore I'm in any way looking forward too. I've a long history of being a pack rat, and am descended of an ancient line of pack rats. That stuff was meant to be kept - not discarded like the rubbish it likely is - is deeply ingrained into my dna. It's why cupboards and attics and cellars were invented - so we'd have places to keep all the things we don't need so we never ever have to worry about throwing them away.

Going against this rule is decidedly uncomfortable for me. It's not the physical matter itself I'm attached to (at least this is a notion I comfort myself with. The truth of it is open to interpretation). Most of it is completely worthless, and more often than not utterly useless. But there are memories there, and I do so hate the thought of losing a memory. Memories are precious. Amongst the more pointless of my possessions, for example, I have a single piece of a jigsaw, the rest of which I never owned and which I suppose has long since been discarded. It's of no earthly use or value to anyone, but I hold on to it since the jigsaw it once belonged to was left behind on the sidewalk of a New York street as the crowd surged forward to the midnight opening of Star Wars Episode one. For a variety of reasons there are a great many happy thoughts connected to that lone piece of a puzzle.

It's just one of many oddments I've collected over the years and which I hold onto out of pure sentimentality. I rarely look at them or handle them, but the knowledge they exist occasionally brings a smile to my face, and so I keep them. But I am trying to come to terms with the fact that I can't keep everything (and nor do I really want to). So I think I've come up with a suitable compromise, namely to keep an inventory of everything I'm going to throw away (incidentally, lest there be any confusion I should point out that anything salvageable will be going to the local charity shop rather than to waste). I own a digital camera after all, so everything I choose not to keep will be photographed, inventoried and stored away in the depth of my laptop (and on suitable backups) where chances are it will soon lie forgotten until some dim point in the future where I'll accidentally stumble across it, wondering what on earth I was thinking of, and, for a few moments, smile as I revisit some old, but happy, memories.

It's doesn't begin to address my overwhelming sentimentality towards inanimate objects, but at least digital nostalgia requires far less real word real estate.