by Christyl Rivers

Created on: September 17, 2010   Last Updated: September 21, 2010

We attach meaning to things even as we lose attachment to the external world.  What some may see as trash, our mind forged manacles have seized upon with a mental connection to something, or someone, we value.  That is why we bury ourselves in belongings.  Even the very word “belongings” has the huge hint within: We wish to belong.  Meanwhile, the external world is being diminished, used up, and  trashed.  How did we get here?  There is a real explanation.

Desperate for connection, we all have some things we just cannot bear to let go of, right now.  We’ll deal with it later.  Then right now becomes buried in boxes and bins of stuff.  If you are guilty of this, start just one closet, and limit yourself to those things which you will share with others, to honor the significance of each and every object.  Turn your shopaholic ways into loving yourself, and life, by not adding to the burden we plow in our landfills.

Psychologist and Sociologists have come to believe our neurotic need for stuff is based in disconnection.  Real value is attributed to an object that reflects a memory, sometimes only a wished for, connection to a person, place, time, or event.

We feel we cannot control the external world. We feel that things like pollution, poison from factories that gets into our products, ground water, and air is beyond our control. But something beautiful, something that long ago maybe Aunt Mary gave you still has a “value” you can control.  In this way, something our children see as hideous becomes something we attach meaning to, and often the attached meaning becomes more important than the actual quality of our interactive time of this moment.

As we clutter our homes we are also cluttering our minds.  As we seek to control the most clutter, we outdo the next pack rat with our hoard of treasures. This is so common that we often end up going to work and then converting part of our paycheck into paying rent for storage of junk we do not actually need, use, or control.  But by storing it, we falsely believe we are in control of it.

The truth it, on all levels we only can control so much.  Once we have too much, it controls us.  This is true for your jumbled box of old papers, broken knick knacks, jewelry that has lost it’s gleam, and so much more.  There is much more to it than that, however. Beyond the box is our home, our neighborhood,

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