Letting Go

Throughout much of my life, I was a hoarder—although I’d never heard that term until it entered the mainstream via television.  I was never very good at letting go of things—books, movies, music, even scraps of paper had to remain forever in my collection.  Over the past few years, however, transitioning back and forth between college, home, graduate school and back home again, and faced with an endless stretch of unemployment, I have become much better at filtering through and purging my collection.  Books, clothes, old movies—it has all found a new home in donation boxes.  I think have an inherent enjoyment of “things” but I find that when I detach memories from them—some things never had the chance to be attached and are therefore easier to toss—it’s easy to let go.  I’m not sure if it’s the best idea, but the vast majority of my college textbooks are going or already gone.  My attachment to most of them was less than nil.  I sometimes find things I saved throughout college and find they are always easily dispatched.  Thanks to digital photography, even pictures have become mere transitory snapshots of our life that sometimes only exist for seconds before being consigned to the dustbin of history.  Nearly every aspect of life has become disposable or full of built-in obsolescence.  Our memories are truly the only thing we can ever possess, and even they are subject to haziness and loss as the years drift past.