Use it or lose it

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I have so many things from different times that I am holding onto.
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They are everywhere I look.
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Last night Panchia and I were discussing how we, as individuals, remember ourselves in time. She does not, she says and I do as though I were looking through a fish eye lens. I remember how I felt at most any stage in my life and all of these feelings line up to create the way I see myself today. I know who I am because I know where I have been and what it felt like to be there.
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So, I do not need a bunch of things to remind me of who I am then do I?
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Well, no and yes if part of who I am is someone who keeps stuff. It is, but another part of me is someone who wants to streamline. Could this be a situation like my relationship to Coca Cola? I grew up with Coca Cola and love it. I have drunk enough of it in the past 43 years that I would always remember the way it tastes even if I never had it again. So do I even need it anymore? I think I do, if only as comfort food, but I do not think I need as much of it.
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The situation with my stuff is like that. I remember when I first realized that, for me, objects had an amazing amount of inherent power. The older something was the more complex the power became. I started shopping in antique stores in my teens. I wanted to surround myself with the richness of older things because I had so little history of my own. But now I have some history and want to see less stuff around me. I want to be free to go places in my mind and have decided that it is time to let go of some of these things. I will still be me without them and in fact I will have to rely on myself all the more. I have finally gotten to the point that I relish the thought of such responsibility.
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