What Things Can We Let Go of?
Recently, my husband has been listing some of our worldly possessions on eBay, including a few collections we have amassed over a lifetime, such as my mother’s stamp collection and his sports card collection. We have decided that we don’t want to carry around all these mementos of our former lives anymore and we don’t believe our children would know what to do with them. He has the knowledge of what they are worth in terms of money and he enjoys the auction aspect of chatting online with potential buyers and packaging and shipping them off.
He says that there is a story attached to every single sports card he looks at, including where he got it, for how much, the interaction with the seller and what was going on in his life at that moment. In spite of this, he is ready to let them go. They serve no other purpose, other than to remind him of the past and he’s happy in the present. They are just taking up space.
I am letting go of the silver commemorative coins that I got under the Christmas tree every year as a child. I do not value looking at them anymore. They are meaningless to me, other than a reminder of a yearly tradition that is long gone. Let some other fervent collector enjoy them and display them as they see fit.
I have also recently thrown away every love letter and photograph from my previous relationships. I even chucked out a lot of friendship cards and photos from my youth, some of the faces of whom I can’t even remember. Apparently, I corresponded with a girl called Simone from Quebec for a few years. I have no idea who she was, and I do not suffer from memory loss (touch wood). I also discarded every memento from my thirty-year teaching career; every thank you card, photo and art project given to me by parents and students.
This whole process felt liberating, as if I am embracing my current life as being enough. I have new goals and dreams and I feel like I can let go of the past that I have been schlepping around for years. Now my children don’t have to deal with all this crap that means nothing to them.
I invite you try it and see how it feels. It’s a new year and we are constantly reinventing ourselves. What can you let go of now to make you feel lighter?
(*For more on this topic, please see my book on the “Shop” header of this blog above:)
The Ultimate Cat: A Baby-Boomer’s Guide to Retirement
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