Love's Labors Tossed!
(Disclaimer: This is an interesting article I came across on a magazine recently. I am re-posting it here, it does not necessarily reflect my personal opinion, but feel free to email me your thoughts.)
A few weeks ago, bored in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, I called my friend Iva.
"How's life?" I asked. "Exhilarating," She responded.
Such a response, by the way, is exactly why I often call my friend Iva, because I don't know anybody who works harder at staying exhilarated than she does. Iva grew up in the Middle East, in a war zone. One would think that a childhood spent amid constant death and destruction might engender a damaged or bitter personality, but with Iva it was like this: Every moment in that bomb shelter taught her to savor the world with a as much delight as possible for life's short duration. I always leave my conversations with her feeling motivated and renewed.
"So, why are we this exhilarated today?" I asked.
Brightly, she replied, "Because I've just spent the entire afternoon throwing out all my old love letters and photographs."
Instantly, I was consumed by dread. I thought, Oh, no -- now I'm gonna have to do this!
Because that's how it always is with Iva and me. She will come up with some inspired new strategy for keeping life fresh and real, and -- as scary as her plan might seem at first -- I will eventually concede that she is right, and I will follow her example yet again to some higher destination. But this particular example was really upsetting. Because if you had asked me, even five minutes before this conversation with Iva began, what personal objects I would rescue from my house if it were burning down, without hesitation I would have replied: "Old love letters and photographs." What else matters? Furniture can be replaced, my book collection is duplicated in every American library, and I'm bored of my clothes, anyhow. But photographs and letters (especially love letters) are emotionally precious beyond worldly value. They tell us who we are by telling us who we were. They assure us that we were once adored, remind us of our lost youth, tie us to departed lovers and dreams, and live on long after we are dead in order to prove to future generations: I existed! Do not erase my memory!
Which is exactly Iva's point.
"When you think about it," she said. "Why do you need all that?"
"But ... " (But I couldn't think of anything to say after the word "but.")
Iva went on to explain that, like me, she has always been a diligent archivist of her own history. She'd been keeping memorabilia for years (with correspondence not only filed chronologically, but with a note on the outside of each envelope summarizing the contents). Like me, she'd been hauling these boxes from one country to another, up and down stairs, from basement to attic to garage, until suddenly the other day she looked at this giant pile of relics and realized: This is way too heavy.
"I'm not a museum," she told me. "All I want is to be free, in this moment. Even from the past. Especially from the past."
"What did it feel like to throw it all away?"
"Amazing. Liberating. Loving. I read each letter one last time, blessed the person who'd written it, and then tore them all up and put them in the trash."
"You tore them up? What are you, Enron?"
"Liz," she said, "it's a fundamental rule of the universe -- nothing new will ever come into your life as long as you block the doorway with your old stuff. You have to let go bravely, and see what fills in the space."
The timing of this conversation was certainly interesting. Just that month, I was planning to move into a new house with my new sweetheart. This would be my first solid residence after two years spent traveling around the world, recovering from a divorce, learning who I was all over again, and experimenting radically with ideas of freedom and surrender. During those two years, though, many of my belongings and papers had been hibernating in storage, and now it would all have to be decided -- what did I want to bring with me into the future? And what should be left behind?
I sought opinions from friends; would they ever be willing to tear up old letters and photos? My friend Lori said, "No way... but I'd burn them." She went on to explain with more seriousness, "Feng Shui philosophy says that any object given to you by another person carries that person's energy into your home. Even letters. So you have to decide -- whose energy do you want inhabiting your living space?"
Good question. Do I really need to be archiving enraged correspondence from my ex-husband? (Or, for that matter, even the tender valentines he'd written before things turned foul?) Do I really need a three-foot-tall stack of passionate dispatches from a boyfriend who'd broken m y heart so severely I'd cried for a solid year, lost 30 pounds in grief, and contemplated suicide?
Then again, when I mentioned to another friend of mine (a literary biographer) what I was considering, he howled in alarm: "NOOO! Keep all your old papers! Have some mercy on the poor scholar who has to write your biography 50 years from now!"
This not only raised the delicate question, "Is it slightly narcissistic to store one's love letters for the benefit of one's assumed future biographers?" but also introduced the question or me of whether my memorabilia holds any literary value -- for me or anyone else. Doing research for my books, I have often been profoundly aided by old letters, found in historical societies or in somebody's bottom drawers, that reveal the personalities, heartaches, and desires of people who themselves are long gone. So it would be sort of insulting to the creative process for me to dispose of my own primary sources, wouldn't it? Or was that argument just an excuse to cling to my past a little longer?
Iva's daring challenge haunted me to the point of near obsession. To purge or not to purge? In the end, as with all unanswerable questions, the only way to decide was just to embark on the project and see what happened. And so, in the attic of my new house, I sorted through a giant (way too giant) pile of boxes filled with, it seems, every scrap of paper, postcard, grammar-school diary, and Polaroid in the history of the universe. And here's what happened -- much to my surprise, and with the greatest of ease, I threw most of that stuff away.
As for the discarded remains, I crammed them into four Hefty black trash bags and hauled them down two flights of stairs, feeling, as Iva had said, exhilarated. With those sacks on my back, in fact, I felt like Santa Claus, but a Santa who brings joy to your home by emptying it, instead of filling it. Remembering that woman who set fire to half of Colorado a few years ago when she ignited her estranged husband's letters in a national park, I decided not to burn these papers, but just to leave them on the curb. I wasn't even concerned about privacy. I thought, Hey, if some garbageman decides he really needs to read through all my old love letters, well, let him do it. None of it belongs to or resembles me anymore, anyway. Besides, who knows? Maybe he'll find something wonderful buried in there and write a novel about it someday. And then maybe I'll buy his novel and put it on its very own shelf -- right in the middle of my clean, clear, ready-for-anything new house.
Lovers may come and go, but their romantic letters should last forever.
Unless, of course, you decide to throw them all away. By Elizabeth Gilbert
Unless, of course, you decide to throw them all away. By Elizabeth Gilbert
A few weeks ago, bored in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, I called my friend Iva.
"How's life?" I asked. "Exhilarating," She responded.
Such a response, by the way, is exactly why I often call my friend Iva, because I don't know anybody who works harder at staying exhilarated than she does. Iva grew up in the Middle East, in a war zone. One would think that a childhood spent amid constant death and destruction might engender a damaged or bitter personality, but with Iva it was like this: Every moment in that bomb shelter taught her to savor the world with a as much delight as possible for life's short duration. I always leave my conversations with her feeling motivated and renewed.
"So, why are we this exhilarated today?" I asked.
Brightly, she replied, "Because I've just spent the entire afternoon throwing out all my old love letters and photographs."
Instantly, I was consumed by dread. I thought, Oh, no -- now I'm gonna have to do this!
Because that's how it always is with Iva and me. She will come up with some inspired new strategy for keeping life fresh and real, and -- as scary as her plan might seem at first -- I will eventually concede that she is right, and I will follow her example yet again to some higher destination. But this particular example was really upsetting. Because if you had asked me, even five minutes before this conversation with Iva began, what personal objects I would rescue from my house if it were burning down, without hesitation I would have replied: "Old love letters and photographs." What else matters? Furniture can be replaced, my book collection is duplicated in every American library, and I'm bored of my clothes, anyhow. But photographs and letters (especially love letters) are emotionally precious beyond worldly value. They tell us who we are by telling us who we were. They assure us that we were once adored, remind us of our lost youth, tie us to departed lovers and dreams, and live on long after we are dead in order to prove to future generations: I existed! Do not erase my memory!
Which is exactly Iva's point.
"When you think about it," she said. "Why do you need all that?"
"But ... " (But I couldn't think of anything to say after the word "but.")
Iva went on to explain that, like me, she has always been a diligent archivist of her own history. She'd been keeping memorabilia for years (with correspondence not only filed chronologically, but with a note on the outside of each envelope summarizing the contents). Like me, she'd been hauling these boxes from one country to another, up and down stairs, from basement to attic to garage, until suddenly the other day she looked at this giant pile of relics and realized: This is way too heavy.
"I'm not a museum," she told me. "All I want is to be free, in this moment. Even from the past. Especially from the past."
"What did it feel like to throw it all away?"
"Amazing. Liberating. Loving. I read each letter one last time, blessed the person who'd written it, and then tore them all up and put them in the trash."
"You tore them up? What are you, Enron?"
"Liz," she said, "it's a fundamental rule of the universe -- nothing new will ever come into your life as long as you block the doorway with your old stuff. You have to let go bravely, and see what fills in the space."
The timing of this conversation was certainly interesting. Just that month, I was planning to move into a new house with my new sweetheart. This would be my first solid residence after two years spent traveling around the world, recovering from a divorce, learning who I was all over again, and experimenting radically with ideas of freedom and surrender. During those two years, though, many of my belongings and papers had been hibernating in storage, and now it would all have to be decided -- what did I want to bring with me into the future? And what should be left behind?
I sought opinions from friends; would they ever be willing to tear up old letters and photos? My friend Lori said, "No way... but I'd burn them." She went on to explain with more seriousness, "Feng Shui philosophy says that any object given to you by another person carries that person's energy into your home. Even letters. So you have to decide -- whose energy do you want inhabiting your living space?"
Good question. Do I really need to be archiving enraged correspondence from my ex-husband? (Or, for that matter, even the tender valentines he'd written before things turned foul?) Do I really need a three-foot-tall stack of passionate dispatches from a boyfriend who'd broken m y heart so severely I'd cried for a solid year, lost 30 pounds in grief, and contemplated suicide?
Then again, when I mentioned to another friend of mine (a literary biographer) what I was considering, he howled in alarm: "NOOO! Keep all your old papers! Have some mercy on the poor scholar who has to write your biography 50 years from now!"
This not only raised the delicate question, "Is it slightly narcissistic to store one's love letters for the benefit of one's assumed future biographers?" but also introduced the question or me of whether my memorabilia holds any literary value -- for me or anyone else. Doing research for my books, I have often been profoundly aided by old letters, found in historical societies or in somebody's bottom drawers, that reveal the personalities, heartaches, and desires of people who themselves are long gone. So it would be sort of insulting to the creative process for me to dispose of my own primary sources, wouldn't it? Or was that argument just an excuse to cling to my past a little longer?
Iva's daring challenge haunted me to the point of near obsession. To purge or not to purge? In the end, as with all unanswerable questions, the only way to decide was just to embark on the project and see what happened. And so, in the attic of my new house, I sorted through a giant (way too giant) pile of boxes filled with, it seems, every scrap of paper, postcard, grammar-school diary, and Polaroid in the history of the universe. And here's what happened -- much to my surprise, and with the greatest of ease, I threw most of that stuff away.
- No, I didn't keep a pile of unsent letters ("Your face haunts my dreams") to a guy I'd worshipped in eighth grade, but have not thought of since.
- No, I didn't keep the three-foot-tall stack of passionate letters from a boyfriend who'd broken my heart so severely, and so on, an so on...
- And no, the world will never need 25 old diaries chronicling my four-year-struggle with depression, every page containing the words "despair", "hopelessness", "failure", or "confusion". I don't want those dark and lonely words in my attic anymore; I don't want to sleep beneath them.
- Yes, I did keep one photo of me and my first boyfriend (both of us so blonde and young and pretty, we look like sisters.)
- Yes, I did keep one tender valentine from my ex-husband, as a reminder that not everything from the past has to be forgotten.
- Yes, I did keep the personal essay I wrote in fifth grade beginning with the sentence: "If, for some strange reason, I don't end up being a chiropractor, I think Real Estate would be an excellent career choice for me, although the pay is sometimes spotty."
As for the discarded remains, I crammed them into four Hefty black trash bags and hauled them down two flights of stairs, feeling, as Iva had said, exhilarated. With those sacks on my back, in fact, I felt like Santa Claus, but a Santa who brings joy to your home by emptying it, instead of filling it. Remembering that woman who set fire to half of Colorado a few years ago when she ignited her estranged husband's letters in a national park, I decided not to burn these papers, but just to leave them on the curb. I wasn't even concerned about privacy. I thought, Hey, if some garbageman decides he really needs to read through all my old love letters, well, let him do it. None of it belongs to or resembles me anymore, anyway. Besides, who knows? Maybe he'll find something wonderful buried in there and write a novel about it someday. And then maybe I'll buy his novel and put it on its very own shelf -- right in the middle of my clean, clear, ready-for-anything new house.
//The END
Labels: articles
-- posted by Pooh Bear @
2/10/2006 04:04:00 PM
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