As I pack my things to move, and having just cleaned out my grandmother's apartment last week, I am thinking a lot about the role of stuff in my life. What I choose to keep is largely informed by my identities. I choose to keep objects that affirm my identity in some way - books that affirm my politics and literary sensibilities, my journals that affirm me as a writer, flyers and programs from my shows that affirm me as an artist and producer, and video equipment that denotes me as a filmmaker. While reassuring, these objects also anchor me to my identities, to a past that may be in flux, that may need to change. Perhaps clinging to objects helps me feel safe by protecting me from having to change my identity, which is usually disorienting and scary. As long as I have my filmmaking equipment I am a filmmaker, even if I am not actively making films. This gives me a false sense of constancy. If I can control my possessions, then it feels like my life is within my control as well. And yet, our possessions seem to control us more than anything. Where I live is determined by the amount of stuff I have. How much money I need to make is determined by how many things I buy or want to buy. Letting go of old habits and negative thoughts patterns also involves letting go of possessions that are no longer serving me. It mostly feels freeing, but there's a slight sense of loss too, a fear that maybe I'll need it sometime and there won't be any more. How do you relate to your possessions? Are you happy with the amount of stuff you own? Have your possessions ever owned you? If so, what have you done about it?
A project to rewire my Brain, reconnecting to my Heart and Soul.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Day 41: Clutter
As I pack my things to move, and having just cleaned out my grandmother's apartment last week, I am thinking a lot about the role of stuff in my life. What I choose to keep is largely informed by my identities. I choose to keep objects that affirm my identity in some way - books that affirm my politics and literary sensibilities, my journals that affirm me as a writer, flyers and programs from my shows that affirm me as an artist and producer, and video equipment that denotes me as a filmmaker. While reassuring, these objects also anchor me to my identities, to a past that may be in flux, that may need to change. Perhaps clinging to objects helps me feel safe by protecting me from having to change my identity, which is usually disorienting and scary. As long as I have my filmmaking equipment I am a filmmaker, even if I am not actively making films. This gives me a false sense of constancy. If I can control my possessions, then it feels like my life is within my control as well. And yet, our possessions seem to control us more than anything. Where I live is determined by the amount of stuff I have. How much money I need to make is determined by how many things I buy or want to buy. Letting go of old habits and negative thoughts patterns also involves letting go of possessions that are no longer serving me. It mostly feels freeing, but there's a slight sense of loss too, a fear that maybe I'll need it sometime and there won't be any more. How do you relate to your possessions? Are you happy with the amount of stuff you own? Have your possessions ever owned you? If so, what have you done about it?
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"The things you own, end up owning you."
ReplyDelete--Tyler Durden
Make sure you draw the distinction between mere "possesions" and "tools."
A tool is something that helps you do something, to make things, to change the world.
Sometimes those tools can take the shape of sentimental items that help get you MOTIVATED to do things and make things, and those are OK too.
Real clutter, as seen on Hoarders, Public Storage commercials, and garages throughout my neighborhood, is about something else. The false promise of consumerism--"IF I have this thing, my life will change."
Those of us who have gone off the script know better.
If it helps you do something, or helps you remember who you are and what's important, then keep it cluttered!
Deb
My relationship to stuff has changed drastically as a parent with 2 young children, and all the accoutrements that go along with it. And living in a whole house vs. a tiny studio apartment in an intentional community. I have so much more stuff than I ever imagined back when I wrote this blog post. Like furniture for a whole house! I recently went to my parents house and took a few things from storage: mementos that I have yet to process and only looked through for a few minutes. What becomes of these items that affirm our identity when they are stored away in boxes for years and never interacted with? These days I tend to have a rotation of my drawings and guiding questions that help me focus and remember who I am and my life's purpose, my process in that moment, and then box them away over time.
ReplyDeleteThese days, I save way less memorabilia because I'm more realistic about my capacity to process and enliven these items over time. I'm also less sentimental as I age. And also, with each year there comes less novelty. Less that feels "noteworthy". And, I still have the precious box with my artistic works, programs from the events I'm producing, the drawings my kids and I are creating, etc.
Perhaps there is a loss in saving so little evidence of the moments of my life. This is something I can take action on, by saving the guiding questions and drawings that frame my days, as a way to look back on the journey of my year through the lens of what I was pondering and praying about.