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Posted by: Kim_Hamilton on 10/22/2007 12:17 PM Updated by: thepinetree on 01/03/2008 09:12 AM
Expires: 01/01/2012 12:00 AM
:

Memory, Pack Rats and Stuff~By Karen Wildwood

Memory is a strange thing. Sometimes we think we remember things correctly, only to find out that we don’t. Then at the times we feel like we should remember things, they just don’t surface when they need too, leaving us with the vaguely uneasy feeling that we’re losing our minds....




The weirdness that accompanies memory is multi-layered and many of us deal with it in a variety of different ways, from writing notes to ourselves for basic everyday to-do items to keeping a calendar or daily diary of the important things and conversations that have taken place.

Some of us deal with our memory ineptitude by becoming pack rats. Yes, I said pack rats. This may seem like a stretch, but after having spent a weekend trying to downsize and sort through all of my treasures I realized a particular truth. I came to the realization that the reason why I’ve been holding on to out of date clothing - picture the mighty shoulder pads from days gone by -, books, furniture and random scraps of paper with scribbles on them - although, I must admit this isn’t so odd when you consider that I am a writer - is because each of those items holds a shard of a memory that, with a little prodding, can become full fledged jewel.

The experience of finding and refinding these times is almost like something out a Science Fiction book or movie, in which the holder can relive an experience just by holding a certain object. The catch-22 is that our own objects are highly personal and their memories can only be unlocked by ourselves. They are our private corner of the world, when the world is becoming a lot less private and a lot more universal.

In sorting through my boxes of stuff, I found cards from 20-years ago, yes, I did say 20-years ago, along with random and miscellaneous items that I should have thrown away when the dinosaurs walked the earth, like letters from schools, student loan papers and old bank statements that for some odd reason thought I had to keep for the record. Why I need a record I have no idea.

The rest of the items were of a much more personal nature, letters from old flames - including my first love - tokens of affection from family, friends, and again old flames and other things that would inspire a moment of reverie and a pang of ‘should I throw this away or not?’

One of the problems with the what to throw away and what to keep question is that every single item, whether it be a scrap of paper or an expensive piece of jewelry has a story, a memory stored in it that is very difficult to let go of, because due to the vagaries of human memory there’s always the chance that we will forget that memory if we don’t have the item there to remind us of it.

Now, I know there are people out there who are extremely streamlined and travel light. They don’t keep hardly anything. I assume they either have fantastic memories or aren’t bothered with what they can’t remember if they can’t remember it.

But, I think the bulk of the population are like myself, we just have hard time letting go of things not because we intrinsically like to keep things and be burdened down by them, but, because our things hold a link to our past that we have a terrible time letting go of.

That being said, those people who are able to throw things away may have the right idea, because they may be less burdened those very items both physically and emotionally. In other words, they keep what they need and get rid of the rest. Not a bad way of existing when you think of it.


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