There comes a time in life when living zen-like is more appealing than the "organised mess" a person is used to. It comes when you feel crowded in and there is no more space for you to move. When you find that you can hardly breathe anymore. And especially when your folks complain about the dusty jungle that is your room. So you come to the painful decision that letting go is for the best.
Purging a roomful of sentimental
junk is no joke. It does not tug at the heartstrings; it pulls so violently that
the heart is practically ripped out of the chest and torn into shreds. The pain
of parting is such a bitter kind of sorrow with the dread that the memories
that come with the things would fade quickly. To the select few in the know, memories are an important part of
this old lady. So yes, it hurts to let go.
Oh, how sweet if that were only the
case. The bigger cause of the ache however actually stems from the fact that I
have no idea where to start in getting rid of the stuff (that is, if I do decide to do so). And when I do get started, I am transported to the land of reminiscences with each trinket, gadget or even a piece of paper I get my hands on. As a result, it takes a long time to finish and I end up keeping more than half of what I intended to let go. Such is the problem of
a sentimental old fool like me.
And so from today, I promise...
To not accept or acquire
brochures of any kind.
To not keep packets of ketchup and other sauces.
To borrow CDs instead to load music in my phone.
To refrain from browsing in bookstores,
especially bargain bookstores, until I've read every single book I've bought
for the past couple of years.
To give away the small trinkets
like brooches, pins, souvenirs, etc. that I know will not be of any use to me
except to provide lovely memories. (Ouch. :'( )
I especially promise...
To throw every single bit of
receipt right away in the trash no matter how sentimental they might become to me (case in
point: now fourteen-year-old call receipts from Coron and Culion, Palawan).
Same goes for tickets to movies,
theme parks, tourist attractions and the like.
Show programs aren't safe from
that fate either no matter how memorable I know they'll be as time goes by.
Test papers too, even
if they stroke my ego with the high grades I've gotten eons ago. That includes
test papers with failing grades even if they make me laugh to this day.
And decades-old school notebooks even
though they contain doodles that amuse me up to now.
Oh, and foreign newspapers that remind me of the places I've been. Throw, throw, throw!
So simple, yet so difficult to do. One golden piece of advice I've gotten from people is that I should simply close my eyes and shove everything into a garbage bag. That's easy if you're sensible. Unfortunately I'm not blessed with that gift and so I had my mum help me, which makes it my seventh resolution: Enlist a sensible person to help.
Happy to say that in a day we've gotten a huge part of my stuff into garbage bags and more that are to be given away. And some of the things that I decided should remain are now neatly stored in boxes. What a huge accomplishment that is compared to the past two days I tried to sort everything out myself. Now if I could only get my mum to help me again with that other cabinet of treasures...
