La Voz de Galicia – Septembre 20, 2024 →
It’s incredible to think about the number of things we accumulate over the years. Useful and useless items that no longer serve any purpose other than taking up space, yet for some reason we keep them without knowing why. Objects that carry the memory of a moment, a person, a place, and which we can’t bring ourselves to get rid of because we feel that if we throw them away, that memory will go with them. But that memory will also go with us, I thought the other day when I took that item to the trash, only to bring it back up again, and then take it back down… Because the space I inhabit is so small that the mere idea of keeping something already takes up enough space.
In New York, I live in a small apartment, and I’m aware that thanks to that, in the twenty years I’ve been living here, I have learned to let go of what I don’t need, what is taking up space and which I sense I won’t use. I’ve also learned not to acquire more things than I actually need because to bring something new in, even if it’s just a sweater or a pair of shoes, I have to get rid of something old, as there’s simply no room for anything else.
And then I wonder if this new skill of mine, the one I have acquired that goes completely against my family’s tradition—– the same tradition that means there’s still a tube television gathering dust in the living room today, “because it still turns on” – if this new skill will also apply to the things that take up space in my head, to the memories that serve no purpose other than to make me feel bad, memories that would be better off in the “recycling center” of memories. I wish I could put it into practice so that my mind could learn to age without carrying anything more than what is necessary to survive…
