Loving Me By Proxy
Recently I’ve starting donating things again. This is a relatively recent development that started only about a year and a half ago. Prior to then, I had always been labeled as a packrat. I was the child that still had all of my artwork from elementary school, Nintendo games in their original boxes, and nearly every school folder that I ever assembled. With my GTD implementation, I started acting on things that required some action to finish up, filing things I felt important for reference or future use, and, yes, purging a whole heap of items that I hadn’t used in years and couldn’t see any likelihood of using in the future. Last year’s move to the new apartment went much smoother for my relentless cleanup efforts.
Lately, I’ve been pondering how a lot of my things keep me from feeling truly free. Some sit on my project wishlist taunting me to boot something more important off in their favor and some just provide me with a concrete connection to a childhood that was often characterized by rapid change. That Sega Genesis? A reminder of a friend who remained a friend even after I moved. The Atari in the corner of the closet? Evidence of how much my wife loves me. The beaten up cat toy in the shoebox? A remnant of an old friend who I sometimes miss very much.
Slowly but surely I’ve been migrating some of these items from my closet to a Goodwill donation box. At times, it hurts as I remove those old vestigial bits of myself, but with each piece comes the increasing revelation that I’m spreading joy by sharing myself. Someone else will learn to love my Sega Genesis. Someone else will find just the silk tie to express himself at a upcoming job interview. They will learn to love the items I’m giving away, and in doing so, they will be learning to love me by proxy.
It’s seems paradoxical that you could learn so much about yourself by letting go of who you were, but the reality is that we transcend the need for a notion of self when we let go of the past and embrace the present beautiful reality in front of us in this moment. When you free yourself of the open loops in your life, you’re free to connect with a body of creativity much larger than your self.