Stuff

Not so long ago, I had a proliferance of "stuff". A fully furnished three-bedroom house for two people, a basement full of boxes that had never been unpacked from the previous move, a garage well organized but still housing instruments for fixing and pruning and tuning.

Three sets of dishes, stemware used maybe a half dozen times, two full sets of mixing bowls, two crystal punch bowls (never used), more cooking utensils than one could realistically ever use, and on and on and on.

Don't think I wasn't complicit in the collection of this stuff. It was simply part of the path. What next was a larger house, with more stuff, a more expensive car, more and more and more.

The collecting, however, wasn't satisfying. I'd been lulled into thinking that once I got a promotion and was pulling in a bigger salary, I could afford the stuff that would complete the picture. If I just had my BMW, I'd be happy. Or once I built a house, I'd feel content and satisfied. Or once I got to retirement and saved all my money, I could do what I really wanted to do.

Mostly this meant that I was waiting.

And in the meantime, I self-soothed by surrounding myself with things I'd bought into believing would dampen the pain, pass the time, or compensate for feeling lonely or abandoned or just not good enough.

Circumstances changed, and I had two opportunities to evaluate my stuff. One, moving out of my house to a furnished apartment; two, selling the house.

In the first case, I carefully considered what I needed and took very little -- some clothes, some shoes, some comforts (a stereo, the DVD player, my dog Jake). I think I had one or two books, which for me, can be about a weekend's worth of reading. The decisions about stuff were not just about what I needed to be comfortable or surrounded by familiar things; it was about a larger evaluation of needs -- emotional, mental, spiritual and physical.

Selling the house meant needing to clear it of the stuff that'd been collecting there. The drivers behind the sale were deeply emotional, and I made it a point to make the process as unemotional as possible. Only a few items made a short list of things I wanted, and a few of those were negotiated away (amicably, I might add). The rest was scrutinized carefully -- if only to determine whether to sell, donate, or trash. But it was all very mechanical. (Though the stories about the ensuing yard sale could consume several more posts...)

Now, faced with another move, this time to an empty apartment, I'm bombarded with decision after decision about stuff. Because, truth is, there are things I need. However, I'm spending more of my time these days thinking about how to make possible the experiences I want to have, exploring relationships I want to develop, and understanding what motivates me.

I have no doubt that it'll be easy to slip back into collecting stuff in an attempt to define myself. The trick is, I think, to define myself first.