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‘It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.’ ~Bertrand Russell
What do you do if you can’t let go of something you own?
How do you deal with the “just in case” syndrome, or the “it has meaning” syndrome?
There’s no easy answer for letting go of the emotional attachments we put into our objects, nor for letting go of the fear of what we might need in the future. But for me, the answer has been to change how I look at ownership.
Ownership, for me, is more fluid and less concrete.
We don’t own something for life — that’s wasteful, because most of our lives we don’t need or use something. We “own” something just for as long as we need it, and then pass it on.
Think of ownership like a public library — we check things out when we need them, and then return them when we’re done, so that others can use them. If we ever need something again, we can always check it out again.
In practice, for me, this has meant passing books and clothes and other things on to friends and relatives when I don’t need them. It means giving things away to Goodwill and other charities. It means getting things from Goodwill, used book stores, thrift shops, Craigslist, Freecycle, friends and family. And yes, sometimes buying things that I owned years before.
This means sometimes spending a little more, but it also means I’m giving away a lot of value, and others benefit from things I think are great. It means things pass through my life, into the lives of others, and I don’t try to hold onto anything. It means no object holds much emotional meaning for me, and so the meaning is instead put into experiences, relationships, conversations, the moment.
Some examples from a reader who is moving and has trouble parting with some possessions:
1. The baby’s things. She (the reader) says, “We don’t know if we want to have another baby in a few years. It’s hard to look at all of our daughter’s outgrown clothes and toys and items and think of selling them/giving them away when there is a chance we might have another baby. Seems wasteful. But then again, it seems stupid to ship a whole huge hoard of stuff simply to safeguard ‘in case’, when the reality is we may go through all that effort and never have another anyway.”
Just In Case is the reason we hold onto a lot of things. The vast majority of the time, we don’t need them. But we’re afraid we might, so we hoard. It wards off insecurities about the future. I beat this by actual facts: I let go and see what happens, and in the six years I’ve been trying this, I’ve never regretted it once. Experience trumps fear.
If you need something, you can get it again. If you aren’t using something, let someone else use it who might need it. And you’ll save yourself a lot of expenses: moving the stuff, storing it, caring for it, mentally remembering everything you have, fixing things that get broken, cleaning things, stressing over how many things you have.
2. My books. She says, “I have an ereader now, and that will be a godsend down south. But I also have a bunch of nice books here, that I’d hate to part with. I have already paired my collection down to: only the novels that I plan to read again multiple times + reference type books + cookbooks. This still makes for a huge pile, and my mum pointed out that most of them will probably mould in the humidity anyway. Do I just leave them all here and replace them in eformat when/if I feel like reading them? Seems like more money down the drain.”
Yes, give them to someone who would like them. You’ve read them, and you won’t read them again (at least for awhile). If you need the info, it’s probably online. If not, you can borrow the book from a library, or find it used online, or swap with someone online. It’s not money down the drain if you enjoyed the books, and if you let someone else enjoy them.
3. Decorative things. She writes, “Picture frames, candle holders, woven baskets, all the little things that sneak up on you over the years… Seems silly to get rid of everything when we don’t know what we’ll need at the new place, and could end up buying some of it all again.”
I’ve found that only a few pictures is all I need for decorating. We used to have a lot of candle holders and other decorative things, but when we got rid of them, it was liberating. Our house became emptier, but I found that I actually liked the emptiness. It means we have space to fill it with conversation, laughter, play, and silence. Whereas when we fill our house with stuff, we are doing it to stave off the void, to avoid having to fill it with experiences and silence.
There is almost nothing in my life that’s irreplaceable, other than people. Sure, I love books, but there are so many others out there in the library and thrift shops and friends’ homes that I will never miss the ones I give away. Sure, I would miss photographs if I lost them, but I put them all online now anyway, and more importantly, my life isn’t in the photos but is happening now. Sure, I would need a laptop and a few clothes if my house burned down, but those things are easily replaceable.
I’d miss my blog if I lost it, but not because of the lost words … I’d miss the readers.
And in the end, you learn that the people and the moment are all that matter. Everything else comes and goes.
‘As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.’ ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Her First Subscriber
“How did you do it?” she asked. “In a sea of blogs that never make it, how did you start a personal blog that attracted the attention of 10,000 subscribers?”I chuckled. “You know, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around that one myself.”
“Come on, Marc,” she insisted. “I’m being serious here. I’m getting ready to start my own blog and I’m nervous about failing. I want to cross all my T’s and dot all my I’s – I don’t want to start it until I know how to do it right.”
I stared at her for a moment. “Well, one Sunday evening a few years ago, I made a decision to write an article about something that inspired me, and then I published it on my blog. And every Sunday evening since, I’ve made a similar decision.”
“That’s it?” she asked. “No launch plan? No design tweaks? No marketing?”
“No, at least not initially,” I replied. “I did a little tweaking later on down the road, but by then my blog already had a catalog of articles up online. And most of the tweaks were based on reader feedback and analyzing visitor stats to see which articles were attracting the most attention.”
“So you think I simply need to start writing, right now… about the things that inspire me?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “The only way you can fail is by not writing – by waiting around until you have the perfect plan before you start. Because ‘perfect’ doesn’t exist. It isn’t human. It isn’t you.
She smiled and said, “Thank you.”
Later that afternoon, she emailed me a link to her first published blog article. And I became her first subscriber.
What’s the core purpose?
The hardest part, I have found, of creating something new – a website, a product, a technology – is simply the act of starting. We let our creative minds get so caught up in planning and designing idealistic requirements and prerequisites for our new creation, that we drastically hinder the actual process of creating it.What stops most people from starting with a less than perfect plan or product is the fear of failure. There’s a common misconception that if you don’t get it done exactly right the first time, your creation will fail and all efforts will be lost. That without this feature or that tweak, there’s no point at all. Nonsense.
The truth is that every successful creation or innovation has a foundational core purpose – a tiny essence that justifies its existence. Any tweak or feature above and beyond the scope of this core purpose is optional. When my friend decided she wanted to start a blog, she spent all of her energy trying to map out the perfect plan and design, instead of simply writing her first few blog articles – which is the core purpose of a blog.
So the next time you decide to create something new, back yourself into a corner, cut out the fluff, and release your core creation into the wild ASAP for others to experience and tinker with. Less than perfect is a perfect start. The need for intelligent tweaks and adjustments will arise naturally as time rolls on.
