In the morning, when your six-year old wakes up, you’ll ask him casually, “Have you ever heard of this game called ‘privates’?”

You know he knows what it is, because he told another child at school that he’s played this game — one where you take off your underpants — with a babysitter. He’ll shake his head no and drop it to his pillow. You’ll gently press on, asking if a grownup has ever asked to see his private parts. In response, his eyes will squeeze shut, and he’ll shake his head harder. You’ll hope with a fierce desperation that he’s telling the truth, even though your gut is screaming that something is very, very wrong.

moooooooon

When one or the other of these thought patterns makes it hard to throw things away, we can’t see what we really need now, at this moment. We aren’t sure what would satisfy us or what we are looking for. As a result, we increase the number of unnecessary possessions, burying ourselves both physically and mentally in superfluous things. 

The best way to find out what we really need is to get rid of what we don’t. Quests to faraway places or shopping sprees are no longer necessary. All you have to do is eliminate what you don’t need by confronting each of your possessions properly. The process of facing and selecting our possessions can be quite painful. It forces us to confront our imperfections and inadequacies and the foolish choices we made in the past.

 Many times when confronting my past during the tidying process I have been so ashamed. My collection of scented erasers from primary school, the animation-related goods that I collected in junior high school, clothes I bought in high school when I was trying to act grown up but which didn’t suit me at all, handbags I bought even though I didn’t need them just because I liked the look of them in the shop. 

The things we own are real. They exist here and now as a result of choices made in the past by no one other than ourselves. It is wrong to ignore them or to discard them indiscriminately as if denying the choices we made. This is why I am against both letting things pile up and dumping things without proper consideration. It is only when we face the things we own one by one and experience the emotions they evoke that we can truly appreciate our relationship with them. 

There are three approaches we can take towards our possessions. Face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them until the day we die. The choice is ours. But I personally believe it is far better to face them now. If we acknowledge our attachment to the past and our fears for the future by honestly looking at our possessions, we will be able to see what is really important to us.