Jessica
Yesterday, my husband and I were able to venture out to the real world to see a movie. Despite all of the hype surrounding Avatar, we chose to see Up in the Air. We made the right choice.
Good movies (to me) are the ones that make me reflect upon my life. They make me ask: Have I made the right choice or right choices? Am I living my life in the right way? In Up in the Air, the main character (played by George Clooney) espouses a pretty simple, business-speak philosophy: What’s in your backpack? He sees all of us as turtles, carrying every thing we’ve ever owned, every person we ever care for, on our backs. All of these things slow us down, holds us back from our real lives that are always just beyond our reach. Of course, as the movie progresses, he is able to distinguish between the unneccessary things that hold us back and the necessary things that make our lives worth living.
At the beginning of the movie, I admired this character’s portability. Everything he needed in life could be fit into a business travel wheel bag. He packed it with precision and care. He carried it everywhere. I have always longed to be that light, to be the person who can distill my life to its essentials.
In actuality, I am a hoarder. Not reality-tv-series level or anything, but I like to collect stuff. It shows in my life. My purse or bag is always crammed with receipts that I no longer need, silverware, random items I may or may not use in my travels. My home is no better. I collect books like they’re going out of style, I have piles of paperwork I mean to file (but forget to) lying on my desk. I have mementos, half-finished projects, and candles I rarely light littered throughout our condo. My half of the bedroom closet is a scary, haphazard sort of place. I’ve always wondered what would happen if I just got rid of it all, burned it up as Clooney’s character suggests in the movie, and start over. What would I keep?
Of course, we learn that Clooney’s character packed too light, that he leaves too much behind. He cuts out the crap, the bulky collections, the non-essentials, but he also cuts out the people he wants to love. I have zero desire to cut people from my life, even on my most introverted days.
I have to believe that there’s some sort of middle ground between saving and discarding that I haven’t found yet. I know that I connect the things in my life to memories of my past experiences and my identity. Take my book collection, for instance. (Don’t really. You can’t have it.) It’s always expanding and contracting. Every time we try to sell off some of our books, I try to imagine what my “finished library” would look like, what it would say about my reading tastes and personal past. Instead, the library is always in progress, always a reflection of the things I’m reading and thinking about now and in a vague back then. We have a finite space (our 900 square foot condo) in which we can only store so many books, contain only some of the symbols of our interests.
I’ve been thinking about this dilemma all morning. Not just about my books, but about all of my living spaces, physical and emotional. What are the things that I want to retain, that reflect who I am right now? What are the things I can shed, without judgement or regret, the things that are no longer me? Of the things that I keep, how do I want to keep them, so that they are displayed with care and precision? These are the questions that are, for me, the hardest to answer.
