Change of Address
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
What a busy three weeks it had been. Cleaning, tidying and moving. It’s no joke to be moving heavy pieces of furniture down four flights of stairs. It’s also not funny to be carrying heavy boxes down the stairs into the car and climb back up for even more boxes!
It’s intriguing the amount of stuff and thingamajigs a person can collect over a short period of time. The amount of sentiment a person can have on their possessions also serves to further add to the pile of bits and pieces one calls their own. I’m sure you can all agree with me that it is indeed really hard to throw away personal belongings. You’ve to be pretty ruthless to do so.
We often tell ourselves that we might need that certain something in the future and continue to keep them as you might never know when it could come in handy. Then again that certain event that you’ve been keeping the item for might never happen and all you’ve done is waste more precious storage space. On the other hand, how many times have we chucked something out only to realize a few months or years down the road, we find ourselves saying “I knew I shouldn’t have gotten rid of that“.
It is a very human thing to do to collect stuff. Take a look at history. People have been collecting things since the dawn of time. Many artifacts we see today in museums are a direct result of that. Take a moment and think about your own personal collections. Stamps, coins, jewelry, games, alcohol bottles, models… Sometimes people even collect things that are normally thrown away!
While some people collect items that are rare and priceless to display their wealth, most of our collections consists of oddities that has little or no value to anyone else besides the sentimental value we place on it. I would think that for most people, they collect items of personal historical and sentimental value as a link to the past and memories, to remind themselves of the past.
We often look back to the past with the lens of nostalgia, forgetting most of the bad things and only remembering to good bits. While working in a dialysis ward, I’ve met many war veterans telling me their war stories with fond memories and often neglecting the atrocities of war. They collect war memorabilia such as medals and photos to remind them of the romantic aspects of the past.
Then again, many collect simply because they have an interest in it. No more no less. I know a patient who is a bit “Train mad” as his wife calls him. He loves everything about trains. He loves the history, the ride and sound of the train chugging past. He has a huge collection of train models in his house. I have another colleague who is a Star Wars fanatic. He collects all things Star Wars. Heck, he even built his own storm trooper armor!
Sense of completion is another thing that drives people to collect. I read a lot of books. Usually, I would keep buying the same books (and read them of course) in the saga and the entire franchise just to complete the series. I used to play Magic: The Gathering when I was younger. That bloody game nearly drove me to financial ruin in the quest to complete the collection!
And so I stand in my garage looking at the towers of boxes in the corner amazed at the amount of stuff I’ve collected in less than a decade I’ve been in Melbourne and yet at the same time horrified at the insurmountable challenge of reorganizing everything again.
Le sigh~~
Category : Journal Entries
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