I was talking to a friend who needed help editing a paper. She said she was having a hard time getting the wordcount down to fit the requirements of her assignment. I said, hand it over, because if there is one thing I am good at, it’s throwing away words.
Other things I am good at:
- Cleaning out closets (my own or yours)
- Giving things away that I actually really like just because someone else said “hey that’s nice”
- Washing glasses before you were done drinking that thing
- Not finishing my food
- Breaking up with boyfriends
Hmm. I am sensing a pattern here. One might say that I have a fear of commitment, but actually, that’s not it. I have a fear of garbage (see #5). I’ve always had a thing about not wanting to accumulate too much stuff. I like to know that the amount of stuff I have is manageable. I live in a very small cottage with hardly any storage. My closet (my one single closet) holds less clothes than most of my friends have in the trunk of their car. When I buy a new pair of shoes, I have to get rid of an old pair.
It’s not that I’m not materialistic. I am. I love things.
It’s more that I’m fickle. I like to think of it as “Buddhist.” I try not to get too attached.
Along those lines, I have an ambivalent relationship with the concept of owning books. On the one hand, I am a writer who gets paid for writing, so it would seem reasonable that I would believe in supporting other writers by buying their books. On the other hand, my extreme aversion to accumulating things (and to excess in general) has led me to a philosophy of sharing books.
I used to collect books. For many years I lugged boxes and boxes of books around every time I moved. After about my 4th cross-country move, I finally took a cold hard look at my collection of books and what it stood for. Did it stand for my convictions about reading and supporting writers? Did it stand for my adoration of storytelling? Or was it simply an ego-based testament to my reading accomplishments?
The truth is, I rarely read a book twice, and if I do, it’s decades later. There are too many books to read and this life is too short. (There are exceptions to this rule, as there are to every rule.) Also, I really like to support the library system.
In the end, I got rid of all my books. Except, you know, my Chronicles of Narnia and my Little Prince and my Maggie B and my Julia Cameron books and a few others. I ran into an old friend yesterday, and we had this very same conversation about books. He said that he always keeps his books, and has shelves and shelves of them. He said: “Books are treasures.”
That they are, my friends. That they are. But for me, they are treasures whose energy I love to pass along.
Lovely attitude toward books and reading, of course, no surprise. But I do love the way you expressed it.
And I do wish I could, as easily, rid my life of things in that way. All of the things on the list.
[...] think of myself as distinctly not a hoarder. When in doubt, throw it out, is generally my motto. I don’t typically get attached to things, and nothing in my fridge is [...]
[...] I love to throw things away. But there are a few things I have always hung on to, and one of them is my collection of journals, which I started keeping when I was about eight. I have four boxes full of them. Every few years or so I pull one out to reflect on past me and see if I have changed or grown at all in three decades. [...]