One of the keys to happiness, imo, is travelling light -- no baggage!
Certainly this works beautifully as a metaphor for a forward-looking mindset, personal growth, blah blah blah. But that's not what I mean. I mean getting rid of physical objects -- or never acquiring them in the first place.
It is legend in our little family that when I went to spend a year on an island in Polynesia all those years ago, I took with me only Aiden, Tris, and one carry-on suitcase with everything for the three of us in it. My rule then (and for many years afterwards) was that I should be able to pick up both boys and all of our luggage and run, if necessary. (It was, on occasion, necessary.) I am extraordinarily proud of this (to the point of inducing eye-rolling around the dinner table when I bring it up) because packing light may be my only actual virtue.
Why, then, given the obvious purity of my ascetic soul, do I own so much fucking stuff?
I am convinced that this whole moving-to-Italy-and-living-under-a-cork-tree-in-the-sun thing will only work if I can pick up all of our luggage and Jonathan and run.
OK, that's a metaphor.
But while I'm procrastinating on painting the fence, I am working on getting rid of stuff. I have started with clothes because that is easiest. Clothes that can go: clothes that I have only for work that make me look sensible, clothes that look good in the closet but not on me, clothes that no longer fit since I gained the covid 19, clothes that there is nothing wrong with in themselves but that I never ever wear. Those are easy and there is a box on the living room floor now that is headed for the ARC.
But what about my Public Image Ltd. t-shirt from 1979, too fragile to ever wear now? Or my t-shirt from The Cave circa 1988, too precious to risk to the rigors of daily life? What about my wedding dress? Or the tiny silk-screened shirts that seem like doll clothes that Emily sewed by hand for my little boys when we lived with her on Rarotonga?
It's not so much the clothes that I mind parting with -- it's the relics.
