Be Like A Tree

This upcoming weekend promises to be a big one in terms of things:  The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I are meeting at The Ranch and looking through things one last time.  I say "looking through things".  What I am (selfishly) hoping to get out of this is either a verification or retaining or get rid of things I have currently set aside for saving.

Moving as I have has been a very eye opening experience in any number of ways.  One of the biggest - and most surprising to me - has simply been my changing view of the things I own.

While most of my things are here with me, a few remain back in New Home - in this case among them, almost 30 years of journals (those, of course, are coming).  But things scattered about a largish home are very different from those same things in an apartment.  And it is not just the nature of the things filling up every space - they do not (although my bookshelves might argue otherwise).   It is the question of "do I use the things I have now?"

A simple example.

Prior to the move, I easily had 60 or more T-shirts of various types from sporting events and colleges and just "ones" that had been purchased for me.  I agonizingly let go of about 20 of them but consoled myself with the 40 or so that I kept.  Upon arrival at New Home 2.0, I discovered that closet space in an apartment is quite different than closet space in a house.  The T-shirts went from hanging in a closet to being carefully folded in a drawer.

An odd thing happened over the Summer.  Turns out that you can only wear one T-shirt at a time, and the T-shirts that make "the cut" are far less than the T-shirts in the drawer.

I am being fair with myself as - given the advent of "The Coldening" which I am reliably informed lasts from now until March or April - likely few of these will be worn. I will give myself another full Spring and Summer cycle.  But if they are not worn then, off they go to the donation pile.

I like to believe that other than books, I do not have a lot of "stuff".  But that is a bit of misnomer.  I have multiple training weapons for iaijutsu, a few random bladed weapons that caught my eye, and the sorted through kitsch that we all seem to get over time, the sort of thing that means a lot to me - but not necessarily to my heirs.

Sort of like the stuff at The Ranch.

Like the tree that Rumi speaks of above, I am trying to let things fall away instead of holding on to them, especially things that no longer mean once they once meant.  It hard - far harder than I anticipated.  And likely it is going to taking far longer than I anticipated. 

But maybe that is okay.  As long as I can slow the acquisition, I can hopefully reach a balanced state where I have what I need, perhaps what I even enjoy - but no more.  After all, trees have all the leaves they need, but not one more.