SELF Storage

 ("You Can't Take It With You, But You Can Put It in Storage")

It is not self storage but SELF storage, retaining those items that are far more essential than necessary, far more a reminder of what has value than a statement of what is valuable, far more important for emotional comfort than physical well being.

These are pieces we retain or fear they are lost to us forever. The first drawing that looks like a drunken effort at making a circle, the first report card that forecast inevitable greatness, the first letter from summer camp and the next dozen for good measure.

If it were my decision, all of these items times a thousand would be carried with us in ever expanding volume until we traveled as Sisyphus from one venue to the next. But my wife is able to see that an item discarded is not a life thrown away, that the accumulation of stuff is not the same as the retention of memories, that creating clutter for clutter's sake leaves us no space for what lies ahead.

When we sold our house after spending nearly a quarter of a century acquiring and keeping, it was my wife who was able to separate wheat from chaff, to limit my attachment, to distinguish inconsequential from irreplaceable. You would be surprised to learn that your heart only breaks for the tiniest of moments when the third grade report on yesterday's trash becomes exactly that. 

Ultimately, bigger fit into smaller and, though many things were gone, nothing was really lost. 

In the final analysis, SELF storage comes from within, not from with out. For what we carry with us from place to place is located not in a basement, an attic, or a storage shed, but only in our heart.