STUFF!

After a long and extraordinary process, I have finally received the five boxes of personal items I packed and shipped from Florida in January. My closet overfloweth. Frankly, I don't have sufficient room for everything now, largely because I only have shelves, no space for hanging things like coats and dresses.

Then, in my wandering across the interwebs, I stumbled on this admonition:

"Stop buying unnecessary things.
Toss half your stuff, learn contentedness.
Reduce half again.
List 4 essential things in your life,
stop doing non-essential things.
Do these essentials first each day, clear distractions,
focus on each moment.
Let go of attachment to doing, having more.
Fall in love with less."

I choose the word admonition judiciously. It comes from the Latin "ad" (towards) plus "movere" (to move). Generally admonishment connotes a sort of verbal punishment, a result and reaction after bad behavior as in, "I admonished Fido for peeing on the rug," or, "Dad admonished me for failing my chemistry test." As I considered the perfect noun for this little web-based poem, I realized that it is not meant as indictment but instead as motivation to move towards something.

"Move towards" reduction of these material constructs. " Move towards" clarity and purpose. "Move towards" simplicity.

Now, I'm not much of an ascetic, and am not about to renounce my worldly possessions, but there's something to be said for the freedom and clarity that derives from having little. If you can pack everything that matters into a bag, you can go anywhere you please. For several years now, I've denied myself the comfort of home and familiarity, actively replacing that stasis with travel and new horizons. I've been unfettered and unattached as possible. I've consciously sought to collect a life in the form of experience rather than things, and I've been deliberately unemotional about leaving behind places and people over and over again. Frankly, it's incredible, even depressing, to me that living this way I've still managed to accumulate so much stuff, mostly clothing. It's even more frustrating to know how upset I was at the long delay in its arrival. I like to think I was just desperate to get warm clothing for the winter.

Maybe what this admonishment is driving me to move towards is a different awareness of what exactly I'm collecting. With less material items, the mind focuses more acutely on more ethereal spoils of the road: friends, education, collected tidbits of wisdom, sunsets that cannot be photographed. Of course these things have long been my goals, but how often do I really focus on them? How often have I lost a moment by thinking ahead to the next one? I could slow down, I suppose... stay awhile.

And I won't run off to the Salvation Army with my boxes tomorrow. I'm so grateful to have a diverse selection of t-shirts and warmer winter clothes that I have been spending the last couple days dumbly smiling at the closet. But let's be realistic: I'd do just fine and dandy with half of all this. Or less. It is, in the end, just stuff.