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Possessions are strange things, they exist in a real sense, are tangible and have numerous properties. Take their affect on a person preparing to move or actually in the act of moving; a task that is required of most during one‘s lifetime. We have gone through just such an undertaking in sell our house last year, but were not prepared for the work nor the memories it evoked that needed our attention. It was like these possessions had more of a hold on us than we did on them.

In America we tend to amass a great many of things, possessions (what we call our property) and let‘s face it, junk! This is probably a result of our capitalistic society which not only condones this behavior of the collector, but encourages it! An affect of this behavior is we tend to collect things most of the time that have no intrinsic value, things we have no real intention of using again. Some of us even collect for the sake of collecting, or because we are too lazy or too unwilling to sell, give away or throw out. This is when we discovered we were carrying this stuff around as a large invisible burden. We did not realize it was there, until some force of nature made us confront this massive monster.

We came to our epiphany shortly after my wife and I decided it was time to sell the house and move on with our lives; which up until then we considered one of the foci of our live’s, the other of course being our children. As we poured through all the boxes and other containers in our attic we continually shook our collective heads as to why we saved some of what we had. There are always some things for sure that should not be thrown out, a family photo album or Bible, for example. What we found instead were boxes and bags of old clothes, old children toys both usable and broken, old electronics and a myriad of other paraphernalia. These were all sorted into the following substantive sets, keep for family, sell for money, donate to those in need and throw it away. It was only with this multi-pronged approach that we were able to climb out of our own mount Collyer without it falling in on us.

In the end most of our stuff will not be missed. Some of it has found a better use helping others or has been recycled into the community via the many internet transaction portals one has access to nowadays. The little that remains, that which has any intrinsic familial value, will remain with our children. Most of it furniture that we have collected, jewelry, paintings or other family related artifacts. And yet no longer having it or worrying about where something is has been cathartic. We have recognized a new found freedom that we enjoyed once prior to our marriage. We are unburdened, free. It was always there it was just covered by so much junk we had lost site of it. We have therefore made a promise, moving into the waning years of our life, to change our spending and collection behavior. Our experience is we just do NOT need it and no longer want any of it. It is with this re-found knowledge that we take to our retirement and our fondness for travel, with an ever lighter step. The pain is now gone. Buon viaggio!