Inspired by the example of a good friend who whittled down
her possessions to a duffel bag and a couple of boxes so that she could live in her VW van, I have been on a
multi-year quest to “simplify.”
Last year, moving from my 10-year residence in California to
a smaller apartment in Dallas, I discarded, by various means, maybe 30% of my
accumulated schtuff.
(“Schtuff” is my word for superfluous possessions. For example, a bicycle is something you use purposefully, as you do a computer. That’s not schtuff. Things that sit on shelves, all
shoes beyond the third pair and furniture that can’t be slept on... that’s schtuff.)
I paid a distressing amount of money to have some
professional movers transport the remaining 70% of my schtuff to Texas. Upon arrival, I then discarded another 10%
because it just flat didn’t fit in my smaller space.
Alright. Down to 60%
now.
For some reason, I’m not happy at 60%. I want really serious simplification. Furniture, appliances, home deco, books,
clothes... all down to barest bones. At this point in my life, I want to be a turtle. I want everything I own to fit on my back.
It seems I am far from alone in this mindset. The book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying
Up” by Marie Kondo is an Amazon #1 bestseller right now. Tidying and simplifiying is an idea whose
time is right. Maybe we have finally
become glutted with all our schtuff!
The author has made a lifetime’s work
of the science of tidying up. She
advocates radical de-cluttering, all in one great fell swoop. None of that gradual, moderate,
one-room-per-week sort of thing. She
insists that storage solutions just promote more hoarding. Get rid of it. Just do it.
Kondo’s criterion for keeping or discarding something is one simple self-aware
question: does this item spark joy? If
it doesn’t, into the bag it goes. The moment you touch an item, you know. It either sparks joy, or it doesn’t. Simple as that.
The end result of discarding of great amounts
of schtuff is that you are surrounded by things that do give you joy, with no
distraction or stress or overstimulation by the many, many things that
don’t.
I have long been drawn to the Japanese
aesthetic, which appreciates stark beauty, simplicity, transparency, natural
materials and the grace of open space. There
are no tchotchkes, knick-knacks or
gewgaws to draw your eye, collect dust and subtly agitate you.
This is a Japanese teahouse.
It has a focal point; your eye is drawn to the purpose of the room, the
teapot. Transparency is achieved by
glass windows. The walls are unadorned
so as not to distract, the materials are natural and untreated. It feels like a haven of peace. 
What interests me most about this bedroom is
that the shelves are EMPTY! Most of us
could not rest until we filled up those shelves with something. Anything, just don’t let that space go empty! This is how things like doll
collections get started.
The
discipline of leaving shelves empty could be a grand mental experiment. There is potentiality in empty space. Maybe
leaving empty space around your physical body allows your mind some room to
play. Maybe that is our own personal potentiality. Who knows what might come of it?
I yearn for peace in my life and my home. But perhaps the deepest reason I am discarding my schtuff is the memory of how happy I was as a pilgrim on the Camino de
Santiago. I carried only the necessities
of life and only in such quantity as I could wear comfortably on my back. The freedom I felt from being so unencumbered
was far more fun than any possession I have ever owned.
One day on the trail, I saw an abandoned castle on a hill
behind a town that I wasn’t even planning to stop in. I made the instant choice to climb up to the
castle and explore. It wasn’t in the
guidebook, and I was all alone in the medieval ruins and I spent a most magical
morning there. I could do that because I
was entirely self-contained. Wherever I
went, there I was. I didn't have to be somewhere in order to catch up with my possessions. Everywhere was home.
My pilgrimage experience lasted only 5 weeks, but it is a
metaphor for life overall. We’re, none
of us, taking any of our schtuff with us.
Your schtuff will likely not mean much to the people you leave
behind because they have their own schtuff and probably don’t have the physical
or mental space for yours. We are all
pilgrims on this earth, and an overabundance of schtuff just distracts us from
that simple fact.
Pilgrimage was the happiest time of my life, and
I am convinced that it was not a one-off opportunity. As I discard more and more schtuff, I am
poised to go explore any castles on hills that I might encounter. I don’t want to miss anything because I have schtuff weighing me down or distracting me from seeing the opportunities that
dance by. I want to live in potentiality.
