By my count, I have moved 25 times in my adult life. That works out to once every 1.44 years. Probably more than average, but with less frequency in the last few years. Those moves have taken me to six cities and two states.
Over those years, I have had many opportunities while moving to pack and unpack my belongings. Each time, it is a chance to evaluate and decide what is worth keeping and what can be let go. It is ironic that an item that once held much sentimental value can lose that value over time. We all have them, things that we keep simply because they evoke a memory. We don’t use them, just keep them. Usually tucked away in a box and forgotten until we have cause to unpack them again. It is at this time we revisit that memory. We look at it and decide whether it is time to delegate that memory to the past or keep it alive. Symbolically, these items make a statement about who we are. If kept, they represent a piece of us. If discarded, they do not mean we are ignoring what they represent, but simply placing it in the archives of our lives.
Cleaning and purging can be therapeutic. It can help us to let go of old wounds, grow up a little and set aside previous goals for new ones. The priorities we have in our lives are not what we say they are, but rather a result of how we spend our time and resources. So too, what we value of our past is represented by the things we choose to keep with us, not what we might answer if asked. Last year, I was going through boxes of items that are keepsakes – not things I use, but memorabilia of my life. Coming across a stack of VHS tapes from my television days, I realized that, not only do I not have a means to view these anymore, the significance of what was on those tapes has faded. Faded to the point that my own memory of that time is more valuable than the physical presence of the tapes. Perhaps that is the barometer for evaluating the artifacts of our lives. When the internal archive becomes more real than the item, it is time to let go of the inanimate object.
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