Tonight I am grateful again for the basics–food to eat, a safe, warm, place to live, a relatively healthy, strong body and reasonably sound mind, clothing that covers my body and shoes on my feet. I am also grateful of things that are luxuries in many places: cable television, wireless home internet and computers to use it with, several musical instruments, paintings and prints, various electronics, and numerous other things that aren’t necessities, but make life more enjoyable and fun. While I am grateful to have the use of these things, I am starting to believe there could be such a thing as too much of a good thing. I am aware, as I have been sorting and dejunking and packing in preparation to move, how much stuff I have, some of which definitely needs to go. My daughter accused me of not letting go of things, and she’s probably right. I mean what do I need with all the stuffed animals and beanie babies she’s given me over the years? Ahem.
Suffering, according to some Buddhist teaching, springs in part from clinging and attachments to all kinds of things–people, possessions, states of being. As I look at all the stuff I have (and it’s a whole lot less than I used to have), I find myself wondering just what I should keep and what I should let go of. Part of the challenge for me right now is that I don’t have time to really go through stuff and decide what it’s time to get rid of–I have way more stuff than I have tie at this point. So wherever I go next I am guaranteed to carry with me a bunch of stuff that I don’t need or use anymore simply because I don’t have time to deal with it. And I’m not likely to be settled in even a quasi-permanent home any time in the foreseeable future. So as often happens to people when they move, I am likely to haul junk I don’t want or need with me to the next place I go.
Every once in a while I have the radical thought of getting rid of just about all the stuff I still have. There’s so much that I could offload. When I think of what I really need to have around me to make my life comfortable and enjoyable it’s probably a lot less than I think. I remember repacking a box a few months ago that contained a number of games and other “fun” items–jigsaw puzzles and such. Some of those games I haven’t played in years and yet I kept them. I remember tearfully telling my daughter at the time when she asked me why I was keeping them that they represented hope for me that someday I’d get back to a place in my life when I could play the games with people and have fun and good times. I knew it was probably silly to keep them, but at that moment to have gotten rid of them would have felt like giving up the hope. I will probably eventually give most of the games away, but that was not the day and neither is this one.
I still have a lot to figure out about all this, but I won’t be figuring that all out now. I’ll downsize by getting rid of yet more stuff, but for now the priority is to pack up what I have understanding that I’ll have more sorting, dejunking, and downsizing to do when I get to my next place. I will no doubt be glad to have some of my “stuff” at my new place, wherever that ends up being. Wherever I live next, being in a new place is going to be yet another change in the long series of changes over the last 18 months or so. Having some familiar stuff around me will, I hope, help make that transition a little bit smoother. And given how bumpy things have been, smooth sounds really good. I am grateful to have developed the capacity to surf the waves that sometimes come crashing down, and will likewise be grateful for more tranquil waters ahead. May it be so!
