And a few years ago I decided that if I start reading a book and ten pages in I think it's rubbish, I get rid of it and never even pick up anything by the same author ever again (bye-bye, Ken McLeod, I only bought it anyway because you saw me looking at the blurb one of those Heffers author's evening, I said 'it looks too much like Space Opera', you sounded offended and denied you'd ever written anything of the sort, and I was too embarrassed to put it back).
But, for a lot of things, I think the costs of ownership are outweighed by the return on discovery, when in thirty or forty years from now you you find, when looking for something else, something that reminds you of a time and a place and perhaps a person long gone; when the evening after a funeral you are able to go and find pictures of the person you laid to rest, or something they touched or gave that proves they knew you well.
So I don't advise 'decluttering' at all. It might be cheaper, and it might give you more space, but you'll never know what it it you're losing.
Too many people in this world lose the physical object to which memories are attached, whether through dramatic events like war or natural disaster or fire, or through divorce or theft; don't add to their number voluntarily. Hold on to the past, and to futures past.
And I'm going to read that surprise present. I haven't forgotten it, it still makes me smile when I think of it, and I've carried it through two moves so far (or at least, I haven't deliberately lost it, I think I know which box it's still in). I will read it before Christmas.
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Date: 2009-11-08 11:49 pm (UTC)And a few years ago I decided that if I start reading a book and ten pages in I think it's rubbish, I get rid of it and never even pick up anything by the same author ever again (bye-bye, Ken McLeod, I only bought it anyway because you saw me looking at the blurb one of those Heffers author's evening, I said 'it looks too much like Space Opera', you sounded offended and denied you'd ever written anything of the sort, and I was too embarrassed to put it back).
But, for a lot of things, I think the costs of ownership are outweighed by the return on discovery, when in thirty or forty years from now you you find, when looking for something else, something that reminds you of a time and a place and perhaps a person long gone; when the evening after a funeral you are able to go and find pictures of the person you laid to rest, or something they touched or gave that proves they knew you well.
So I don't advise 'decluttering' at all. It might be cheaper, and it might give you more space, but you'll never know what it it you're losing.
Too many people in this world lose the physical object to which memories are attached, whether through dramatic events like war or natural disaster or fire, or through divorce or theft; don't add to their number voluntarily. Hold on to the past, and to futures past.
And I'm going to read that surprise present. I haven't forgotten it, it still makes me smile when I think of it, and I've carried it through two moves so far (or at least, I haven't deliberately lost it, I think I know which box it's still in). I will read it before Christmas.
Promise.
S.