Purging Stuff we No Longer Need

My colleague next door is retiring at the end of this year. Every day she comes over with a pile of items she thinks I might be able to use: research articles, books, CDs, reports, etc. She's a self-proclaimed hoarder and even found a check a friend gave to her 9 years ago. But, because the journey is turning the corner for her, she is getting rid of her collection.

This, to me, is beautiful.

We build our communities through our collections and the things we put on our shelf and in our forest have temporary meaning for us. They make us who we are. They define us. Yet, at some point, we're able to eliminate the excess and get rid of all those things. Herein lies the greatest freedom.

I feel like I need to purge but I can't figure what I need to get rid of. Everything seems temporary for me: renting my car, renting a house, on a short-term contract, adrift from my old career. I was thinking tonight that I didn't have the purging experience when I left Brown. I gave items away, but I left just as many to room 301. I knew I couldn't carry all those materials and I saved only one box from Brown. I moved on and into new communities.

Yet, I'm thinking about the purging process and how 99.9% of what we do is collect unnecessary things. Trinkets here and there are nice because they take on meaning, but at the end of the road, we only hold on to a few things. It's something to think about: if you were to pack of everything to be given away, what are the items you'd want to hang on to forever. I'm looking around my home right now and thinking, "hmmm. I'm not quite sure."