Needless to say, it was a rather intense experience. Not only were you asked to think of your top five people (ouch!), you had to quantify your life in a very specific way. Then you were helpless as those things are taken away as you watch other people unscathed by the wrathful power of God. Clearly, this exercise mirrors life and asks you to experience loss in a particular way, probably giving different people a sense of relief, jealousy, anger, detachment, etc. And all the while you realize that they are post-it notes, they're little pieces of colored paper which have little resemblance to the real thing.
This made think, however, about the meaning that we imbue on all kinds of things. This from the girl who still has most of her undergraduate papers and three years worth of Wine Spectator tucked away in the closet. For a while, I told myself that my graduate work might necessitate that I refer back to my undergraduate papers (because I must've been so amazing a researcher that there's gems in there for me to borrow?). Then I piled a bunch of sheets and towels on top of them and pretended that they were serving as a linen shelf. Better than having them sit in the very bottom of the closet, right?
It's now been a full ten years since I've graduated and I've never opened those boxes except to look at what they were when I moved the last time. It's true that I haven't really had a reason to get rid of them. They're perfectly fine where they are even though they take up quite a bit of space. But it's also true that I've attached a whole mess of personal identity onto those papers. They represent the self-searching me who discovered gender and race theory, of the girl who went from a pretty typical Asian American SoCal girl with hair down to the elbow to one who was politically active, who had tattoos, piercings and was into the performing arts. In those papers are the first semblance of the seeker that I would become. My belief that the world could become a better place, that there is personal agency and possibility for some sort of social utopia, that's all squished together in a couple of file boxes underneath those sheets and towels.
And now I'm thinking that it's time to throw them away. The thought of it makes me wince. Because detachment is hard, and giving up anything that has served you for so long is hard. And it means that I'm admitting that she's gone, the person that I was when I first begin to discover myself has moved into the past, only to live in the memories of my friends and family. Moving forward is difficult and letting go is excruciating. I suppose that hanging onto the past is even harder, since it no longer exists.
One of my yoga teachers told me last week that getting rid of stuff only hurts when you're doing it, once you do it, you're given a sense of enormous relief, of spaciousness, of weight being lifted off your shoulders. There may be grief, since all loss, no matter how minuscule, is matched with grief and sadness. But once that's finished, there will be room for the present. And we all need plenty of room for the present because there is so much waiting to fill our hearts and minds.
So I'm going to do it, I'm going to take those file boxes and recycle them. Maybe they'll be made into other things: paper towels to wipe up a mess, or a paper bag to carry someone's groceries, or another cardboard box to hold the identity of someone else.
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