Self Help

The word “collecting” is not the best word to describe this problem. Collecting indicates some order or design which in this case is lacking. What I have in mind is the keen desire to gather lots of things because they “might come in handy someday.” Or to keep them for the sake of the past.

Why do we love to collect so many things and have such a hard time throwing them out? Either we do it for the past or for the future. Certainly it isn’t for the present, since the present is suffering because of all this stuff we are trying to live with.

We feel we have to hold on to things from the past because we are trying to preserve some beautiful memory. The things we keep are attached in our minds to some important person or event in our lives, and we keep them out of respect. This is a particular problem when the person whose things we are keeping has died.

One of my best friends felt compelled to keep several houses full of furniture because they were from the estates of deceased loved ones. The same woman had four closets full of clothes four sizes too big from her admired, deceased mother-in-law, whose memory she wished to preserve. A widow I knew felt that if she threw away anything that had belonged to her husband she would be throwing away part of him. My guess is that anyone who loved us would be the first to urge us to live our lives in the present and not try to hang on to the past.

We also try to keep things for the future - just in case we ever need them. We save for possible needs or emergencies that might come. Don’t sacrifice the present for the future. That’s no healthier than living in the past.

There is freedom in having no more than you need, no more than you can control. But the collecting impulse is hard to control because on the surface it seems so logical. Why not keep that yarn? Someday you may learn to knit, and it will be wonderful to have your own supply already! Why not keep all prescription medicines?

The problem with this thinking is that it just doesn’t work. We gather and gather and gather good things, and some things that are not so good. Soon the pile gets out of control, and we can’t find what we want when we need it. Things control us and our lives. We begin to make adjustments in our way of life to accommodate all the “stuff” we have. We tell ourselves that we can’t throw anything out. We end up with so much that it is a monumental task to clean or organize. I am not saying that everything must go. But the collecting mania has to be taken in hand and controlled.