and how to let go of the ones that aren’t.
Even if you live for a hundred years each, that’s like a blip compared to the whole timeline of this planet, whose whole timeline is a blip if we look at the universe.
The point is – your existence doesn’t matter as much as you give it credit for.
And yet, you keep on hoarding stuff that can last several lifetimes, like your old books, an empty box of your TV that stopped working a decade ago, corroded screws that you don’t remember where you got them from – you get the idea!
You often hold on to things for the sake of the memories attached to them.
You can’t go back in time and relive those, but you so desperately want to that you keep holding on to things that remind you of them.
This is fine because nostalgia is mostly a happy place to revisit. It rejuvenates your childish silliness and gives you a refill of genuine happiness that you don’t feel any longer among people of your age – even the ones you have known since childhood.
I mean what else do you expect from them; they’re busy raising kids older than how old they were in those memories.
Reliving that childhood would be silly. But what’s wrong with being silly?
Probably nothing, but you know society and its lack of creativity and tolerance for silliness.
And you must comply with societal norms regardless of how they don’t seem so normal anymore, do they?
But I am digressing. My point is – there is nothing wrong with holding on to things that represent your happy memories.
It’d be a great idea to rummage through all that old stuff once a year – throw away the stuff that doesn’t hold such value (because minimalism) and think about why the rest of the stuff makes you feel so happy.
It can be therapeutic.
We Indians do something similar once a year because we have this ritual of cleaning the house thoroughly right before the festival of Diwali (like Christmas except instead of receiving gifts, we expect hard cash from the Goddess of wealth to buy whatever we want).
It’s fascinating – Google it!
I wanted to end this on the benefit of not owning stuff, but you know how powerful nostalgia can be. We’ll talk about minimalism tomorrow.
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