Unhoarding
In the end only three things matter: how much you loved,
how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. ~ Buddha
I am verging on the final push for moving into my newly built office. It’s just 700 feet north of the old one, but feels miles away. Anything I install must have intention, purpose, and beauty, or so I declaim, drooling over “org porn” catalogs and Pins (the ones that imply anyone can have a constantly neat, matchy-matchy look for all environs). Diving deep into file cabinets, both paper and electronic, I find workbooks from decades of seminars, and proposals for book projects. I was struck with the insight that I am a hoarder… of ideas.
Until I was face-to-face with mounds of lightly sketched projects developed over forty years, I hadn’t felt overwhelmed. Concepts with no commitment don’t take up much space. I could live in the fantasy of “Someday I’ll plant this particular seed and tend it lovingly.” Meanwhile, I was growing a truck farm’s worth of sprouts that didn’t get the light they needed. They were safely moldering unseen, and I was untroubled by their incompleteness in the way a closet can be jammed with seldom worn outfits and we think nothing of buying something new.
What keeps us from taking sufficient pleasure in a new object, and not need to accumulate more? Or stops us from longing to drive a goal straight to fruition? Fears of various flavors:
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of making a mistake
• Fear of failure
• Fear of missing out—to look for something better, be certain we have enough
In their unique ways, each fear manages to convince me it is best to delay, postpone until forgotten. Then a new project can allow me to get excited, talk of the writing life, and how I love to teach what I most need to learn. This keeps me enthralled for hours in design, scope, and imagined success, then I get bored with the hard work of it, and on to the next. Oh, no! I am serial dating my own brain!
There is an innate thrill that drives us to collect (it has all to do with survival, but we must get past our ancient ancestry at some point. I declare that day TODAY.) And its companion is an ingrained resistance to tossing things out: “It might be useful someday, or someone will ask for it.” Self-doubt plagues most of us, undermining the determination to reduce clutter, to get to the essentials. Ambivalence makes purging an anxious game.
Left unchallenged, we arrive at “real” hoarding. This condition is caused by a frantic sense of not having enough, of being in danger if we don’t clutch whatever is in our view, even if chipped, stained, and useless. People who don’t consider themselves hoarders may have mountains of paperwork on dining tables and files choked with statements that are available on-line. It destroys the purpose of having a home: it cannot be cleaned, we don’t want to let others in, and objects may never be found in the piles and files. It makes us hide out, eventually destroying our health and social connection. In a similar way, this glisten of shame is present when we talk of our failed weight loss, projects, and decluttering diets.
The antidote to hoarding is releasing, letting go of the unnecessaries: the most critical being the fear of never having, doing, or being enough. The goal, in all un-hoarding activities? Surprisingly, it is not to get to NOTHING. It’s to find the hidden treasures: objects, dreams, and projects that give life direction and purpose. We must then turn our backs on all the others, so the Muse can whisper the encouraging words, “Just keep going!”
In the Field of Dreams the voice said “If you build it, they will come.” My voice is wondering “When I move, who might I become?” Once I recovered from the shock caused by the piles metaphorically collapsing on me, I saw the simplicity of picking one idea and moving forward. I welcome the resurgence of enthusiasm in toying with older ideas, and comparing them with some new in the fertile soil of solitude. Then it’ll be time to release the ones that no longer appeal. But until I focus with the intention of “pick one and be that,” the ideas will NOT ever be ready to be presented for viewing. I admit I am scared. What if I make a mistake? What if I toss a project that could be brilliant with enough commitment, or choose an idea that is a foolish waste of time. Hmm, that’s it, isn't it?
This is the identical self-doubt that causes people to save used food containers and junk mail, or order the next shirt that will make them feel beautiful and powerful. And then another. I get it. I need to choose which of these seedlings to plant, wondering how much to nurture it, and how to know when to offer it to others as a promise to be kept.
I am learning by doing: the opposite of hoarding is to nourish and appreciate what I have, be it a shirt, a chipped plate, or an idea. And if I cannot do that, it’s got to go.
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