Miserum
Well-known member
I was going through some boxes of old clothes and remembering the memories associated with that clothing. Some were old favorites, others were nothing special. Some evoked feelings of childhood nostalgia and good times, while others brought about rumination and regret.
I had to throw out some of that clothing. Yet when it came to dumping some items for good, I hesitated. I felt a pang of guilt in my decision to trash these items that have been through so much with me. I ended up designating a box for items that held "sentimental value," when objectively, these things were ultimately worthless. They will sit in this box never to be worn again, for years, until one day I open up that box again to experience a single, brief moment of nostalgia, before closing it for another indeterminate but prolonged number of years. Probably... definitely, a waste of space. Just packing them into a box took up time I will never get back.
So this all got me thinking; I don't just do this with my clothes. I do this with other items as well, in particular emotional baggage, except I examine the emotional baggage much more frequently. I am completely focused on the past, almost always. And it's not like I didn't know this already, but seeing my clothes as an analogy to my emotional baggage made that baggage more tangible. It would make more sense for me to just throw this stuff out. What other purpose do they serve but to make me feel a certain way, and mostly bad at that?
Whether it's clothes, other miscellaneous items, or memories of people, I tend to get sentimental about them all. Is this a philosophical mind state that can be changed? How do I dump it all? Do I just stay busy so I don't have to think about it? How do I take the lessons learned from this baggage and simply do away with the baggage itself--and are those "lessons" even worth keeping?
I hear that this is how people avoid depression--through distraction. But that somehow makes me feel like I will be betraying myself... by avoiding thinking about my past, I will be avoiding the most logical conclusions concerning myself and my place in the world. I will be avoiding the reality of things. Unless of course my reality is so completely biased by my own subjective experience, and thus clouded, that it's actually not logical at all.
I had to throw out some of that clothing. Yet when it came to dumping some items for good, I hesitated. I felt a pang of guilt in my decision to trash these items that have been through so much with me. I ended up designating a box for items that held "sentimental value," when objectively, these things were ultimately worthless. They will sit in this box never to be worn again, for years, until one day I open up that box again to experience a single, brief moment of nostalgia, before closing it for another indeterminate but prolonged number of years. Probably... definitely, a waste of space. Just packing them into a box took up time I will never get back.
So this all got me thinking; I don't just do this with my clothes. I do this with other items as well, in particular emotional baggage, except I examine the emotional baggage much more frequently. I am completely focused on the past, almost always. And it's not like I didn't know this already, but seeing my clothes as an analogy to my emotional baggage made that baggage more tangible. It would make more sense for me to just throw this stuff out. What other purpose do they serve but to make me feel a certain way, and mostly bad at that?
Whether it's clothes, other miscellaneous items, or memories of people, I tend to get sentimental about them all. Is this a philosophical mind state that can be changed? How do I dump it all? Do I just stay busy so I don't have to think about it? How do I take the lessons learned from this baggage and simply do away with the baggage itself--and are those "lessons" even worth keeping?
I hear that this is how people avoid depression--through distraction. But that somehow makes me feel like I will be betraying myself... by avoiding thinking about my past, I will be avoiding the most logical conclusions concerning myself and my place in the world. I will be avoiding the reality of things. Unless of course my reality is so completely biased by my own subjective experience, and thus clouded, that it's actually not logical at all.
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