Decluttering

Today I wanted to send my mom "something" in the mail to let her know I was thinking of her. I decided to use a postcard I came across from when I was in Concord, MA around 2006. The post card was of Walden Pond.  I wanted to briefly tell my mom on the card about Henry David Thoreau so I googled his most famous writing.  I have never been so enthralled by it as I was today. It hit a new spot for me because of the stage of life I'm in where I crave simplification; a decluttering, if you will.  Reading this I readily admit that I have so much clutter of possessions, time, demands (from my house mainly) that in my current state and stage, I'm unable "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life".

I suddenly envy my daughter who lives in a tiny 2-room house on a farm in South Africa, who went over with a back pack and a suitcase for a couple of years.  Granted she has more now than will fit in those pieces.  She has resolved not to become too weighty with possessions because ultimately she thinks she will return to the States and cannot bring much back. I also think of my sister who passed away untimely of cancer and who taught me valuable lessons about earthly possessions that you cannot take with you.  This means my whittling down of possessions must be done judiciously. The advice of my friend, Kathleen, was to ask myself: "Do I love this?  Do I need this?"  If not, then I must consider parting with it.  I'm reconciling with this more and more as I look at the next stage of my life as a new act of my play.  Also in Kathleen's words, "You need to be lighter, more nimble going forward!"  Good advice.

Here is Thoreau's wisdom:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

You can read about Henry David Thoreau here on Wikipedia.

These are all photos I took at Walden Pond in August, 2006