George Carlin had a wonderful comedy routine about how we are all slaves to our stuff. In essence, he said, our accumulation of material confines us; if we want to be truly free, we must ditch the stuff.
But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. As I look at the accumulation of things I’ve got — books, magazines, record albums, clothes, CDs, papers, puppets, and just plain junk — I realize that this stuff doesn’t exactly belong to me. Rather it belongs to somebody I used to be.
And there, my friends, is the rub. To hold onto these things is to hold onto the illusion that I am still that person — that somewhat lost person from my past — that I sometimes imagine myself to be when I look in the mirror. A young creature of foolish notions and infinite futures, a naive dreamer and follower of fancies.
There are parts of me, of course, that still bear the smooth contours of that unfinished younger soul. There are times when my mind springs back to an earlier time in my life, and the years drop away as if by magic.
But the truth is that this constitutes only a part of me — and not the most important and salient part. We are all an accumulation of lessons learned, of scars won in life’s sundry battles. We contain within us echoes of our younger selves, but we are not them.
If by some happenstance a great calamity were to sweep aside this years long accumulation of the physical detritus of my past, I would not weep for long. For then this burden would be lifted, at least for a time — the burden of these tokens of an earlier self, sneakily encroaching upon the corners of my life.
As someone who recently gave up an enormous amount of stuff I appreciate this insight. I knew it didn’t feel bad giving it away – in fact, it felt good a lot of the time – but I didn’t quite understand why. This helps explain the ability – no, fun – in giving up so much stuff.
Now if only this newfound wisdom somehow helped arrest the accumulation of NEW stuff. Stuff that that guy I was yesterday someone convinced himself to buy. And order online, so that by the time it arrives the guy I am then won’t know what the heck that guy was thinking.
…r
An interesting idea—that our stuff ties us to our sense of ourselves as we used to be. Maybe that’s why people get so attached to their stuff. Without it we might be afraid of not knowing who we are.