You can either strive to get what you want or learn to want what you get. At the extremes, both lead to bad things.
When I encountered Buddhist thought in my late teens, it presented two paths to satisfying one’s desires: get more or want less. The path of getting more is infinite. The path of wanting less is not. Though challenging when taken to the extreme, it seemed more attainable. Living simply appealed to me.
My definition of simple has expanded in appalling ways over the intervening 40-plus years. Somehow it came to include owning a house, a car, a computer, more pots and pans than I use and a million other things I do not, strictly speaking, need. Still, as a guiding North Star in life, it has worked out well. It has allowed me to earn a modest income yet still live within my means, save some money and find myself at 61 with decent savings and lots of free time to live the life I want.
And since the life I want remains very simple, this all works out. My “best life” does not include a private jet, staying in luxury hotels or even a large house.
This has been much on my mind watching how people grow old with their possessions. A neighbor told me about his mother who keeps giving away things to neighbors who don’t want them. The neighbors started to worry, because this behavior is often a warning sign that someone is considering suicide. When asked point blank she said, “Oh no! Not at all! I’m just tired of the clutter.”
That’s the easier path.
The harder path is to invest meaning into your possessions and then face the challenge of parting with these precious repositories of meaning.
We recently helped my in-laws downsize from their home of over 50 years to an apartment a quarter of the size. Every dish and pan my mother-in-law had to give up seemed to cause pain. I helped her go through a closet filled with kitchen items she had not used in years. She had three relish trays for serving pickles, olives, and nuts at parties.
One was a nice one, unopened, apparently never used. This was a common theme. Often, the “nice” stuff had rarely been used, always saved for a special occasion that almost never came. What then was the point of owning nice stuff?
It made me wonder how many closets across America are full of the “nice” stuff. That, I think, is a generational thing. People my age and younger generally don’t have nice china and genuine silver flatware that they are saving for when the queen or the president comes to call.
Two of the relish trays, on the other hand, were 1970s plastic trays. Definitely not the “nice” stuff. Standing on a ladder, I pulled them out from deep in the back of the top shelf, an exercise that bordered on archeology since those layers of sediment had not been disturbed in such a long time.
“Oh, I like those!” she said.
“When is the last time you used them?” I asked.
“A long time ago,” she said, a bit wistfully, remembering parties long past and a different life.
“More than 30 years ago?”
“Oh yeah.”
Clearly these were not going to fit in the new apartment. Clearly they were not coming. But just as clearly, she wanted them, artifacts of that past life when the young couple hosted parties and were full of energy and hope for the future.
We had a long talk. She explained that she just liked her stuff and hated letting it go. She had chosen it, often finding just the right item at a flea market or on sale. It wasn’t that it had some monetary value, it was that it was hers, exactly what she wanted.
I understood that. I had once built a substantial academic library, mostly bought on the cheap at used book sales, including many out of print volumes. Replacing it would cost tens of thousands of dollars. More importantly, the books felt like part of my identity, an expression of who I was or, at least, who I was at the time I bought them.
I eventually realized my library had become a burden, a collection of heavy boxes to move every time I relocated. So I let it go, not without a tinge of regret. But I also felt lighter. My books were no longer a burden because they were no longer my books.
Part of me understood my mother-in-law’s reluctance. Giving up the relish trays feels like admitting that she is no longer a person who might throw a party, just like giving up my books meant admitting I was no longer the kind of person who might read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (which is true; I am definitely no longer that kind of person).
But part of me was sad. Her possessions have become a burden.
We acquire things, small luxuries, hoping they’ll bring joy, comfort, and maybe even status. Visitors might be impressed by the Critique of Pure Reason on my shelves (Woody Allen opens it randomly and puts it on the arm of the chair in Manhattan to impress his guests).
But ultimately, our attachment to them is a burden. I wanted her to feel the relief I felt in letting go of the books. For her, there was no relief, just sadness and decision fatigue from choosing what to discard and what to keep when all she really wanted was to keep everything.
She told us about an old friend who needs live-in help, but is afraid to hire anyone. She didn’t collect plastic relish trays. She collected fine wine and art and other expensive things. She fears that if she hires someone to come into the house, the person will steal those things.
My first thought was, what does it matter? She collected them over a lifetime and now, ill and near the end of life, she can’t drink those wines anyway. What value do these things really have?
Her fear of theft is costing her the freedom to get help. These supposedly valuable possessions are constraining her, and limiting her choices.
She no longer determines what happens to the things. She has let the things determine what happens to her. I struggle to understand this trade, but I still have 30 years before I’m her age. Maybe I’ll see it differently then.
As I sit here, no longer young but not yet old, I’m taking notes on how to be a happy and successful old person. I’m considering what things I have not used in a long time that should be donated or trashed. I wonder why I haven’t gotten rid of my ice climbing equipment, last used 20 years ago. The technology has advanced, and if I were to start ice climbing again, I would want all new gear.
And yet there it sits, occupying space in my home and my mind.
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