The Tyranny of Stuff
Of all the guilt trips driven by "sins of omission", none is more ubiquitous or depressing than the "wincers" due to piles of urgent papers, boxes of unsorted photographs, shelves full of books, trinkets and mementos that really ought to be put in order. Once or twice a year I actually clear off my desk and put stuff in appropriate folders, boxes or drawers; but then I have to decide what to do with the full filing cabinets, boxes and drawers! And the desk is back to normal (i.e. buried in clutter) within a week or two, so all I have done is hold back the tide of entropy for one exhausting day or two.
How come we torture ourselves with our defeat by the inexorable forces of chaos and accumulation? It's clear that we can never outrun the Second Law of Thermodynamics, so why do we try? Why not just let stuff go? The number of ways to rearrange ten objects is ninety times as large as the number of different ways to rearrange eight objects; why can't we see that the only relief from this tyranny lies in having less stuff?
The answer is, we let our stuff (especially old stuff) symbolize our lives. The red sand I collected from the Great Central Desert in Australia serves to re-run the memory of that trip long ago, even after almost all the details have been forgotten. Every memento represents a memory, and almost all the memories are lost. The further into the past an experience recedes, the less we can retrieve of it. Since we think we are the sum of our experiences, this means we are losing part of ourselves. If we gave up our mementos, the past would be lost completely, and eventually... well, you can see where this is going.
The interesting thing is that the mementos are not memories, they are only symbols of memories. The actual memory of the experience is already lost; what the memento triggers is a fond recollection of a memory, a reminder that we once had an experience that meant something to us. To give up the mementos would cut us loose from the past completely. We would have no choice but to let it go and actually live in the present, as we did as children - or in the future, as we did as young adults.
"But I want my life to have meant something," we wail. "Surely all that past must count, or else what's living for?" Well, maybe it's just for living. Maybe we are more than the sum of our experiences after all. Maybe we were a lot smarter as children.
Your stuff will still be here when you're gone.
