年底 (End of the year)

A couple months ago, I was taking a hike with a friend, and he told me about a friend of his who is quite a serious pack-rat. I commented during this story that many years ago I was a serious pack-rat too (I used to joke: if it touched my hand, it went into some drawer of mine), but I’d gradually weaned myself off of that habit. But, then I had to qualify that: “Except, I’m still a serious digital pack-rat. I’ve got just about every personal email I’ve sent or received since 1986, for example.”

That comment stuck with me. It isn’t like it was a new idea. I’ve been chewing on it for many years, knowing that I’d only dealt with the most visible and painful part of my pack-rat-ish-ness. But, this time, the comment seemed to have a different character. I thought about it more for a few weeks, and then finally one day grabbed my “Historical” folder out of my home directory, and dragged it into the recycler.

The emotional impact of this was interesting. I didn’t even need to empty the recycler! And, of course, I still have a backup! But, that one simple act told me a lot of why I was keeping the stuff. I realized I was afraid that if I’d deleted something, and someday I wanted it, I’d be very sorry. Probably afraid that I’d (essentially) punish myself for having been so “stupid” as to throw it away.

I’ve been fine for the last month, though, with the stuff gone. In fact, I finally emptied the recycler. I guess this is like what I did with physical things: over a period of years, I would put stuff in boxes and say “if I haven’t touched this in a year, then I can get rid of it”. Little by little I got rid of essentially everything, until I finally decided that my need to get rid of stuff was as bad as the need to acquire stuff, and then I stopped doing that, realizing that I didn’t need to control the process any more.

It’s amazingly liberating when your stuff doesn’t control you any more!

This coincides with a bunch of other stuff I have been doing lately. For instance, recognizing that I’m afraid of conflict I’ve decided to try to stop avoiding it. Tied in with that is releasing the need to be right (which, of course, is just a way of protecting oneself from some kinds of conflict (while creating others!!)), and trying to be more decisive (because I tend to be quite a waffler, in general). Strangely, in the last month, I’ve had several instances where I’ve been mortified with shame. Somehow, this is connected with all the previous stuff, for I think by doing the previous stuff (accepting conflict, etc) I’ve taken down some defensive screens, and that’s exposing parts of my psyche to injury that haven’t been before.

The sad thing in all this is the more I practice (and, I can see it will be a long road) changing these habits of waffling, conflict avoidance, etc. the more I see ways I’ve treated people around me badly. This, too, is humbling.

So, it looks to me like 2008 will be a year of letting go of a lot of things!

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