Sometimes we cherish items so much but years later, they lose their value to us. Write about an item or several items like that. What do you think changed their worth?
I once had a ten-year letter friendship with someone. Early on in the relationship, I not only began to meticulously store his letters, but I also began photocopying mine, keeping them in three-ring binders. I would often sit and re-read previous correspondence. It was a means of connection, of creating substance by absorbing the symbols into my being. I was very attached to this person.
As he couldn’t store my original letters, he returned them to me, so I had a good deal of paper to lug around. When I moved to Austin, I shipped them here. Each box weighed about 75 pounds, and there were four of them. At some point during my first year, I decided to destroy these. I came to understand that my attachment to these letters was an obstacle to pursuing my new life. I also wanted to free myself from the burden of worry, to protect myself from the loss I would feel if these were ever removed from my possession — be it from fire, flood, or thievery. Lastly, I recognized that there were aspects of myself and of this friend that I would not want shared with anyone else, and that the truth of the experience resided in me, and not in the papers. I did not need to keep the letters in order for the relationship, and all that I had learned, to be real.
There have been occasions that I pause and feel a twinge of regret for obliterating them. Words are precious to me, and these letters were a form of journal, and significant evidence of my journey. (After all, I take care to back up my blog entries in several places. Though on a practical level, it’s easier to store data this way.) A part of me hoped that after I died, someone would be fascinated with the Inner Workings Of Me (stubbornly clinging to the fantasy of being a Famous Writer or Person Of Significance.) Then I realized that this would likely never happen. At first it depressed me. I didn’t enjoy being so inconsequential to the world. Then I began to put it in perspective, considering the billions of humans of whose existence I am unaware. I am not alone. This revelation released me. I do not need to be remembered to find satisfaction and meaning in existence.
last fall, I started burning my old letters and pictures from high school. i stopped because it got too cold and then it snowed. i will resume the burning in the spring. anyway, i can definitely agree with you on one thing — i didn’t want to lug boxes of memories around that could come back to haunt me in the future in any conceivable way. but i burned these things with joy. i am not the person i was in high school, i am not the person i was five years ago. i see this as not “getting rid of” my past but more as a “let’s live in the moment” kind of exercise. for me, the Now is infinitely more important than the Past. you can’t change the past, so why hold on to it?
“I do not need to be remembered to find satisfaction and meaning in existence.” — GREAT line. Love it. Brilliant. I wish more people understood this but there’s too much ego out there for that to happen.
be consequential in your part of the world. i believe you are.