Here's a response from a reader of my first post on this blog. The context is her suggestion that there must be different levels of value to personal possessions. I'm delighted that she argues not for objects with monetary value, but sentimental value as the most worthy of holding on to:
"Yes, it's still an object, but the emotion that makes it valuable to you is not the sort of thing you can mass-produce. It's unique to you and your mind, and every time the object facilitates the release of memories and feelings, it ceases to be yet another disposable object and instead becomes a relic, a holy vessel of ancestry. No, it's not your grandmother herself, but neither is it wrong or disordered to want to hang onto things that facilitate such deep, personal significance."
What strikes me so much here is the love the writer has. I don't know what objects or loved-ones she's thinking of when she writes this, but each object about which she feels this strongly is tied to a person who she has loved very much. It's been said that the origination of all emotion is love. Even hatred is the human response to rejection, and rejection hurts so much precisely because we want to love and be loved. The writer of the quoted lines above is longing to extend and receive love to people who are no longer near her. What she wrote captures my own feelings as I go about wrestling with things that own me.
But I have to argue with the part of me that identifies with these sentiments. In a way, this is the very heart of what I'm blogging about. And before I examine what I assume Socrates, or Gandhi, or Christ would say to this impulse I share with everyone else, I want to be clear that I'm not saying it's "wrong" to hold on to objects. However, I think I will say that it is "disordered." And my reason for saying so is because the deep valuing of the object is getting in the way of the love of the person. The person who wrote the lines, "every time the object facilitates the release of memories and feelings, it ceases to be yet another disposable object and instead becomes a relic, a holy vessel of ancestry." wants to connect with the person she loved and lost. But notice that the beloved person isn't even the reason she wants to have the object. Her reason for holding on to the object is to "facilitate the release of memories and feelings." The object is providing her with an experience she feels she needs to have. She wants to have the memories and feelings, and she assumes that the object preserves those memories and feelings as if it has the power to generate those memories and feelings. But it doesn't, does it? Would she forget her grandmother if she did not have the object that once belonged to that grandmother? I can't imagine her memories disappearing when she still feels so passionately about that person. Certainly she would never forget her grandmother--but she fears that she will.
What I think is really going on in our minds when we presume that objects have the power of memory is related to a sort of post traumatic stress disorder. Someone we love is gone and it was a great loss over which we had no control. It was a shock, even if we knew it was going to happen well in advance. Every morning for weeks, months, we wake up and feel the shock freshly as if getting the news for the first time. We cannot fight it, we cannot flee it. Settling into a life in which that person is no longer an element is yet another reality over which we have no control. We fear a future without that person. We fear losing our memories of the person.
These fears aren't "wrong." But the fear of loss doesn't get better by having objects. in fact, I would argue, it sets us up for the very thing we fear the most. When we attach the significance of a holy relic to an object, we become responsible for treating the object with proper reverence. Wouldn't the time and effort of doing that be better spent interacting with someone we love now? And wouldn't caring for someone else be a better way of honoring those we've lost? Because, after all, we didn't love the one we lost because of this object. We loved that person because of the interactions we had with him/her. Meaningful interaction with other people is what we want. We want love, not things. Caring for things is misdirected love. Holding on to things is a concession to fear. Isn't love supposed to cast out fear?
4 comments:
aYou have hit on the exact reason I am holding onto way too many items, just because the item belonged to a very special person in my life. But here is my problem. Whenever I see the object it causes me to recall certain memories that are not always present except by the reminder provided by the object. Of course, the person will never be forgotten but the specific memory is forgotten until the object brings the memory back to my conscience mind.
I'm not even saying that saving these items that provide the memories is worth the space, time, or energy that is needed to maintain the items. But to lose the memories seems tragic.
Okay, Anonymous, here's the real question: How can a memory be triggered *only* by an object? Either the specific memory attached to the object is important enough to remember or it's not. Assigning the objects the power of memory is an illusion that keeps you in fear. The fear will accumulate as the objects you treat this way accumulate. The best way to free yourself is to acknowledge that the objects do not have this magical power.
If you know that you'd lose a memory with each object, it might be time to take photos of the objects, attach a note to each describing the memory, and let the thing itself go.
I love your blog Dr. Cowlishaw! Your take on our attachment to things just as things is close to home for me right now! I am going through a similar dilemma in my life as I am on a personal quest to reduce everything in our house by 1/3. Everything. It has been a challenge for me going through books and knick-knacks that I am holding on to for some sentimental reason and convince myself that no horrible thing will happen to me nor will I need it tomorrow if I get rid of it!
Hello Birdget- It's taken me awhile to formulate this response, because so much of what you're saying hits close to home. It's provoking a bit of defensiveness in me, which is unpleasant to recognize in yourself. Part of me feels like a petulant child - "No! I don't wanna let go!" Which I take as evidence that what you're saying is absolutely true, that we do try to use objects to hang on to love, and that fear plays a large part in fueling these emotions. I'm really glad you can relate, because sharing stories makes the struggle easier.
I'm re-thinking this post in the context of your post on religious objects, and it's making me wonder exactly how we can define the difference between "stuff" and "tools." I am struck by the example of the suitcase in your video, which, as you say, was someone's tool at one point, and later became your stuff. Maybe one way we can find peace with our objects (if we're not quite ready to let go of them yet) is to simply keep them in the tool rotation, to keep using them instead of storing them. But that just makes me wonder, at what point does a tool -- say, one that is used infrequently -- become stuff?
On a smaller note, I wish to contest your idea that "either the specific memory attached to the object is important enough to remember or it's not." This is what disability studies would call the neurotypical viewpoint, and while I understand it may be true in your experience, I'd like to offer my own as well. As a person with neurological and cognitive disabilities, I very often rely on devices and/or objects to help trigger memories that I definitely wouldn't remember otherwise, from mundane and everyday things like my work and class schedule to the obscure and occasional like photos of family get-togethers I'd forgotten. I suspect that you are speaking in a spiritual sense more than a neurological sense, and I totally understand that your words referred to stuff, rather than tools, so I see where you're coming from. Just wanted to give voice to other experiences, another factor to throw into the equation.
This, for me, raises the question of universality. I am very curious about how you think your theory of stuff might change when viewed in terms of race/class/gender/ethnicity/ability etc. The "bling" phenomenon in urban African-American culture, for example, strikes me as conspicuous consumerism, consciously performed by a historically underprivileged and disenfranchised group, as a means of asserting status (which is both a power-getting strategy and a survival strategy). Bling is definitely stuff, but would you assess that particular "stuff" in the same way you'd assess your own stuff?
On the other hand, I understand and respect that this is your truth experiment, so maybe the issue of universality is beside the point.
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