Marci Nemhauser
WCL Vice President
I just spoke at Carmen Oaks Retirement Center about the Joys and Challenges of Letting Go. We had a lively discussion about “our stuff” and the meaning we attach to it. What struck me is how much some of us identify the things we have with who we are. We are not our stuff and yet somehow we manage to define our identity, in part, by what we have.
Personally, my husband and I are going through a downsizing process as we move from our home of over 30 years to a condo. The process of sorting and discarding has been an amazing one. I have laughed at some of the things I have chosen to save over the years. And I have cried as I have come across treasures from the children’s past. I intellectually know that I haven’t seen or thought of these things in years and yet it is so hard to just toss them…so I boxed some of them up and gave them to the children to decide on their own what they want to do with them!
But what I realized is that I am going through my own life history and revisiting the things that have shaped who I have become. Letting go of the physical “stuff” doesn’t diminish the impact it has had on me. So, yes, I am not my stuff, but my stuff has served me at some point in time. And for that realization I feel grateful.
Do you consider your “stuff” part of who you are?
{ 1 comment }
Thank you for a question that really takes me on a tour through my past to who I am now.
I’m a Boomer, and because I never had children and my nuclear family is quite small, I have to say that there is very little “stuff” that has been handed down. Therefore the stuff around me is largely of my own making. I’ve moved a few times too and that’s a catalyst to ditch lots of stuff.
So for me, I’ve never defined myself by my possessions. Personally, I believe it is excessively limiting to use our “things” as a definition of who we are as human beings. I know it’s hard to resist, considering the advertising that bombards us every day, but it’s what I believe.
Comments on this entry are closed.