I am a person with a lot of baggage. I’m referring to the actual, crowding-my-space-and-also-my-mom’s-garage type of Baggage. I have every note that was written to me in junior high; I have the vast majority of my childhood toys; I have hand-me-downs, thrifted treasures, whosits and whatsits galore. Some might call me a pack-rat (and several have), though I have always preferred to think of myself as a sentimentalist, or an artfully cluttered individual. It may be a mess, but at least it’s colorful!
I have spent the entirety of my life acquiring this Baggage – I honestly don’t know what it feels like to live without an abundance of Stuff. Growing up, my life was frequently in flux. From birth to high school graduation, I lived in five different cities, at least thirteen different homes, and attended seven different schools. Between the two of my parents, I witnessed five different marriages and four subsequent divorces. In retrospect, I’m able to recognize that my proclivity for acquiring and keeping things probably developed as a sort of security blanket; as something to cling to in order to buffer myself against the periodic upheavals I experienced throughout childhood and adolescence.
To say that it’s difficult for me to get rid of things is an understatement: I can justify keeping almost anything. It’s broken? Yeah, I’m planning on fixing that. I have two of something? Never know when I might need a backup! It’s a useless piece of crap that has absolutely no utility whatsoever? I’m totally gonna make a craft out of it! …Someday! The things I do decide to get rid of often sit in boxes for months or years, patiently awaiting the day I’ll sigh in resignation and drop them off at a donation site.
The thing I’ve found about keeping a lot of stuff around (even if it’s in storage) is that, sooner or later, it takes a toll. Physical clutter has a way of transmuting into psychological, spiritual, and emotional clutter. And though acquiring things has never become a hazardous compulsion for me, it has always been a comfort. It’s a comfort to look at my collection of oddities; my little museum of me. It’s a comfort to feel like there’s some sort of physical imprint of my existence in this world that will stick around after I fade away, perhaps serving as meaningful mementos for my loved ones. “Oh, that taxidermied red squirrel? She found it at a flea market in Paris and just knew she had to have it…” they’ll say as they dab away a tear, wistfully musing on their fondest remembrances of me.
The problem with this kind of thinking – a sort of metaphysical object permanence – is that it’s based on a fallacy. Last week, I finished Alan Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity, and it got me thinking about this thing which I call Myself – and beyond that, that which I deem my Personality. Over the years, I have meticulously assembled various items and attributes – those which I deem Me – while those that are Not Me are discarded. Throughout this process, I become a rigid, brittle idea of a person, based on the preferences that I have expressed at various points in the past. I become, essentially, nothing more than a two-dimensional projection – an approximation of my truest self.
It’s hard – even painful – for me to imagine stripping myself of the clothes I wear; the things I surround myself with. How else will people know that I’m a unique individual? How will they know I have worth? If I do not outwardly express myself, how will others know I have anything to say?
The answer is: they won’t. And the truth is: they never did.
Worth cannot be expressed; it can only be understood. Character cannot be displayed; it can only be demonstrated. The idea that anything in the material world is somehow instrumental in creating or maintaining an identity is the lie at the root of all these assumptions, and the root of my own cluttered existence. I’m ultimately fearful that, without all of this physical ballast to hold me together and keep me weighted down, I’ll float apart into the ether; disintegrate completely.
But beyond the lie, there is a deeper truth: that nothing – absolutely nothing – is necessary for me to be real, whole, or worthy. The inverse truth of being undefined is that of being unconfined. At any moment, I am free to be whatever I want.
This is the freedom on the other side of fear.
arrivingpresently 