Saying Good-Bye To My Stuff

Today on tv I watched a woman down south on a news report. She was kneeling in what was once her front yard, pulling some ceramics and things out of the mud. She leaned over them and cried over them and I knew two weeks ago that would have been me, too, had the same thing happened to my stuff.

But I watched this woman sobbing over her stuff and I thought, "I do not want to cry over things which can be replaced. Family and pets, most certainly--they are irreplaceable. Pictures, ok... but shedding tears over my collected stuff, no."

So this is what I did. I got up and walked around my house and released everything as best as I could. I looked at each thing and told it good-bye. And I asked myself questions, too. "Could I live without that?" And in nearly every case I said--and hopefully meant it from my heart-- "Yes, I could lose that and still be fine. I would not miss it." Even when I looked at gifts from loved ones I knew that I would always remember the thought behind that gift--and that would be enough.

(Though to be honest.... I did think, "Now, if I lost everything and had no money or no ebay or no amazon.com to replace my things, well, that might be a whole different story...")

Only one thing did I pause over, and that is a pencil drawing my daughter's high school art teacher sketched of my daughter. But then, that's in the photo genre, I think.

Talk about freeing!

Later, Tom told me he received another good recommendation from someone concerning a job he has applied for in a southern state, so we both got a little more serious about packing and tossing. And because I'd said good-bye to my stuff earlier, I found it so much easier to just trash what was trash and donate what was donation-worthy.

Before, I'd thought maybe we have too much stuff, but watching thousands of people on tv who have lost absolutely everything, now I am certain we have too much. It's time to let it go because I no longer feel right, or peaceful, about owning it--or its owning me. When the time comes to leave this place, we will leave with a lighter load--in the moving van and in our hearts.