I have a millstone hanging around my neck right now, and it’s giving me one heck of a headache. It’s my office at Carthage, which had to be cleared from top to bottom in early July so it could be repainted and re-carpeted. (It was the original carpeting, which means that it was about 35 years old. . . and trust me, it didn’t win any awards even when it was new.) Well, the new carpet is in – the new paint is on the wall – and now it’s up to me to get the office back in some semblance of order. . . and my enthusiasm for the task is registering right now at about negative eleven. Part of the problem is that I have way too much stuff (if Hoarding were an Olympic sport, I would be Michael Phelps) and this is the moment when I really need to do something about that. But I am wired to hold on to things and every time I toss a pile of papers into the recycling bin, it’s as though a little electric shock jolts through my body. But I know it has to be done, so I’m just gritting my teeth and muscling my way through it.
I think one thing which has maybe contributed to my pack rat ways is something I remember my dad saying many years ago when my Great Aunt Gertrude wanted to sell off all of my Grandfather Berg’s books. At this point he had retired from the ministry and she just figured that he would have no more use for them – but my dad felt strongly that he should be able to hang on to them. “Taking away a retired pastor’s books,” he said, “is like taking away a carpenter’s tools.” I really loved that and agreed with that- but I fear that on some subconscious level I have been holding on to certain things exactly because of those words. But the fact is that some things are as potentially useful as a carpenter’s tools – but other things are more like mountains of sawdust on the floor. . . remnants of something significant but of absolutely no use and actually a serious hindrance if allowed to pile up too high. That’s my situation, I think. I hold on to all kinds of things that are momentos of past achievements or experiences. . . and while some things deserve that sort of treatment, other things simply don’t. And the fact is that if you hold on to everything because you think it’s all important, it ends up making all of it seem rather meaningless. I need to go through and be ruthless about the stuff that simply doesn’t matter anymore – so that the stuff which does matter can have a place of honor.
So that’s the challenge before me. . . and if I seem a little bit crankier than usual over the next ten days, it’s because Ruthlessness has never come easily to me- and I fear it never will.
pictured above: This is about 3/4’s of the boxes of music, books, DVDs, and CDs which came out of my studio. How much of this will I manage to ruthlessly discard? Stay tuned!