I'm aware that this problem will not exist in the villages of Laos or the favelas, barrios, and shanty towns around the world. We hang on to things when we can, because we can. When we can't anymore, the stuff has to go. Make room for new stuff. DEFAULT SETTING FOR MANY HUMANS: "Why clean up old messes when I can be creating new ones?" I'm moving into a new self-definition. The stuff will have to go, including the boxes of old vinyl records. When? How? No idea yet.If you ever have a thought to share on the matter for us youngsters, I'd love to hear it.
If you have walls and a roof, pretty soon you'll have stuff too. It will fill every corner. You don't need the stuff anymore. You may have never needed it, but it spoke to you. It spoke to a memory of childhood or of futurehood. It spoke to who you were or who you want to be. Now it owns you.
The younger you/me/anyone is initially defined by our stuff. It helps us understand who we are. When you move out for the first time, you look at your stuff and ask, "What do I need to be me in my new place?" or maybe you say, "I don't need any of this. Like a snake shedding her skin, I'll fill my new place with a new me." Eventually you become sufficiently fascinating (or sufficiently impoverished) to define yourself by your presence alone. You become "unaccommodated man." King Lear in the heath when he comes upon Edgar: Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.— Off, off, you lendings! Come. Unbutton here. (tears at his clothes) King Lear is a play by Shakespeare. flagamuffin Mostly you realize that you can no longer haul all those things (books mostly) with you on wheelbarrow behind you and you begin to shed. It's awful at first. And then it isn't. As for me: I've been living in a tiny apartment for six weeks, 5000 km from all my stuff. I came here with a knapsack and a carry on. But in some ways, I've been richer than ever before.Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.—Is man no more than this? Consider him well.—Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here’s three on ’s are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself.