— CiaoCatherine

Coming back to what’s part of you

A friend recently moved back to DC after living in Japan for several years. She described returning to her family’s home to all the possessions she had left to store there during her time abroad, only to find she didn’t understand the value they had to her when she packed them away years ago. “Seize those moments,” she said. “The ones where you don’t feel attached to something anymore.”

I like reading about minimalism. If you were to look at my life, and my surroundings, you wouldn’t know this. There’s a stack of framed art that I haven’t hung on the walls, because I can’t choose what should go up: I love it all. Until this week, my nightstand was covered in three separate stacks of books that I am reading, or want to read, or have read. The books; that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it’s demonstrative of the way I go through life. I want to read, see, hear, touch, taste everything. But the stack of art? My inability to choose means that I don’t enjoy much of it at all. There needs to be an editorial voice if anything is ever going to be seen.

I’ve been putting things in bags that I don’t use anymore, or don’t resonate with me. Now that I’m back from a trip, I’m going through them again and try to capitalize on that moment of questioning my friend described. Or, I’ll start to, and realize that if I was willing to put them in the bags in the first place, perhaps the time spent sorting them a second time would be better spent getting them out of my home, so I can enjoy what I chose to keep.