Holding On

In 1967, I purchased (with the help of my parents) a brand new Plymouth Barracuda convertible - candy apple red with a 383 and a four-speed gear shift. There were no other racing-type parts ordered for the vehicle, mainly because I did not have the money.  After 200,000 miles I had the engine rebuilt, repainted with the original pigment color, and installed a new top with a glass back window.  After 25 years of ownership, I put on antique license plates and sold the car a few years later because I needed the money.

In 1987, I got involved with the Total Quality Management program in the USA (it actually started in TN at Tennessee Eastman) and in1990 I relocated to TN to manage the second Center for Quality and Productivity Management in the state.  I was involved with that program until 2010 and had collected over 20 file boxes of notebooks and manuals that had been given to me to help prepare my TQM classes or that had been acquired at workshops.  In 2015, I threw away all those boxes into the local landfill because the home in which I was living was running out of space.

In 2023, my wife and I decided to downsize from a two level house with stairs to a single level house with no stairs.  Our yard size reduced from one acre to just a couple of strips of mowing on all four sides or 3 hours of yard work down to less than an hour.  In order to move into our downsized house, we had to throw away all items that we had not used or worn in the last five years.   We both threw away half our clothes and filled Habitat for Humanity's Truck almost 3 times.

The point is that no one really needs all the stuff they collect nor do they need all the clothes that they have purchased presumably because of work.  It is also apparent that all the photographs and memories that we hang onto are rather pointless as well.  From my standpoint, I had never looked back at the photos I kept from my first marriage that ended in 1993.  Over 25 years of memories that were never looked at.

We HOLD ONTO stuff for a variety of reasons but in the end, none of those items, none of those memories, none of the money that was saved, can you take with you when you die.

SO WHAT'S THE POINT?