Today I was helping my grandmother with her garage sale. She was selling a lot of the junk that belonged to her deceased ex-husband. An older woman came into the open garage and was very talkative.
"I just saw a sign for a garage sale and dropped by," she said. She started flipping through the moldy vinyl records, talking to us about all sorts of things.
"I keep everything," she said. "My daughters tell me not to, but I say to them, 'when I pass away, you'll go through all of this stuff and then you'll know me. If you don't, you'll never really know me.'"
I felt heartbroken when she said that. This woman's identity was totally wrapped up in her stuff - to the point where she felt like she couldn't have true relationships without it.
But really, when one day she passes away and leaves a house full of garage-sale, thrift-store "memories," as she called them, are her daughters really going to go through each piece, lovingly, carefully, reliving each of their mother's memories? Probably not. They'll probably look at the cluttered house as a burden and a chore, and estate sale the whole thing - not because they didn't love their mother, but because stuff is just stuff.
You are not your stuff. I want to shout this message to the whole world. You are not your stuff. Be free.
wow, such a powerful story. It's sad that the woman believed that her stuff defined who she was as a person.
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