Holding On…to What?
“Sometimes letting go is braver than holding on until you break”
Anybody that knows me well, knows I am a purging machine and sheltering in place has given me an opportunity to do yet another deep dive into every room, closet and drawer in my home. In the last 3 decades I have given away enough furniture, art, décor, clothing and accessories to furnish a department store. This month, an SUV filled to the brim with old clothing, never used kitchen gadgets and appliances (why do I have an espresso maker when I don’t even like coffee?) made their way to the donation center. What a wonderful way to lose 75 lbs. instantly!
It’s not that I am unappreciative of the things I have or wasteful in buying. Rather, I understand that everything has a place in time and I am constantly evaluating whether or not something is still needed, wanted or loved. I have always been able to feel the energetic weight that possessions have, and I know the sense of anxiety and dread that comes when I feel they outweigh me. The choice is to keep making decisions about what I need, want or love in my life, or, just turn a denying blind eye to it all and feel like I am suffocating.
Since childhood, I have been fascinated by the relationship we humans have to physical possessions and why we choose to surround ourselves with the things we do. It is my belief that the external mirrors the internal, so it is no wonder that I fell into a deep 10 season binge of the show Hoarders. The people profiled have all become “stuck” at a certain time or place in their lives and, while these are extreme cases, I found myself looking for clues about the human-possession connection common in us all. I started to think about the internal room that we all have where we shove undigested traumas, painful memories or where that tape recorder that repeats our narrative lies covered in decades of dust. It’s a room we all have but many of us are so adept at walking by it like a locked attic door. Denial (of life events, limitations, reality, etc) is one of the most amazing human attributes and it sadly seemed to be the common denominator.
Interesting to note is that the earlier seasons of the show stated that approximately 3 million people are considered hoarders (defined as an obsessive and extreme need to acquire and keep things, even if they are worthless, useless or unsanitary). Later seasons reported 9 million people and by season 10 more like 19 million. That jump is what fascinates me, and I have a theory as to why the reported numbers are rapidly increasing. The world is spinning faster and faster and there is no place for peace anymore. We are constantly being bombarded by external like social media, tech, stores full of junk we don’t need, and even our internal voice that tells us we must be the best, run faster, do more.
We are like electronic price scanners in the grocery store with items coming across the belt so fast we can’t read/process them all and items get jammed up before we can bag properly them. Instead of occasionally stopping the belt to evaluate and take a breath, we try and catch up, asking the brain to go faster and faster, until ultimately, we are bulldozed by so much stimuli that we are swallowed up by it.
Although I am not a hoarder, but watching the show inspired me to search for my locked room to see what boxes I had thrown in there and if anything needed to get the attention of my internal authentic soul/self. Now, every morning just before I open my eyes, (and start to become Kim Eastburn for the day) I breathe into whatever boxes my internal authentic tic self needs to unpack. That exercise has led me down the long emotional corridors that lead to my own locked doors. But if I don’t fling open the door I know I could succumb to the devastating fears that seem so real and insurmountable, but are merely paper tigers of our own making.
Constantly shutting our doors and walking away from the things that need our emotional, physical and energetic attention is a hazard that could cause millions more to be buried alive in the garbage of life.
