I have returned
Aug. 1st, 2007 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabBut I have not caught up on my flist yet - that may take another day. The visit to my friend S in New York was reasonably successful - we can now see parts of the surface of her dining table, sit on the sofa, and see large chunks of the living room floor. There is still a lot to be done, but we made a lot of progress. The best part is, she does know there's a problem, and that only repeatedly facing it will help solve it; I'm not sure she had ever really acknowledged that before.
I got a free ride up to New York - door to door, in fact - with another friend, R, who also still lives in the town we all grew up in, although not in the same house as he lived in as a teenager (my friend S lives in the same house she has lived in all her life except when she's been out of state at college.) And R is also a person with a serious house clutter problem. I am referring to these as clutter, but it's really closer to hoarding, like animal hoarding - think Collier brothers. Really. And I did some thinking about what might be behind the compulsive need to keep stuff, and why, even though![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
squirrel_magnet and I are packrats to some extent, we have never had that kind of major problem.
What it is, I think, is worry about the future. S is still too attached to the past, holding on to all her parents' and grandparents' stuff; while intellectually she knows she won't forget them if she gives away some of their stuff, she doesn't feel it in her gut, and also, she's afraid that if she gives away something, it might be the one thing she needs in the future. She doesn't deal really well with change, and thinking about the future not being exactly like the present means change, and she doesn't want to deal with it. R, on the other hand, lives too much in the future. Partly, 'cause that's his job; he runs a technology-forecasting business. But, he's saved every piece of paper he's had for the past 35 years, just in case the information on it might be useful. Well, if anyone could make use of it, it's him - but it would take several lifetimes more than any of us have, to make use of that much STUFF. He is hoarding information and data to use in the future, but far beyond any future he will live through. His way of dealing with the future is to attempt to be the person who knows more about it than anybody else, and his information addiction is part of that. If somehow one could convince him to take the time away from other things to scan all that paper into electronic form, or at least microfilm, he wouldn't have much of a problem after that. But, he never has free time to do that, because he's busy dealing with the future. And S is trying to keep things in the past.
And why don't Squirrel and I have a problem? Because we live pretty much in the present. We have enough to get by; we don't feel we have to have ever more stuff in order to brace ourselves against change. We wouldn't mind having a little more money squirreled away for the future, but we aren't afraid of the future in general. We figure that we'll be able to deal with it - pretty much like my little side quote from Aurelius. We assume that we know how to find stuff, and if we need stuff in the future, we'll find it then. We assume that we can remember our past. We start from the assumption that we can deal with change, because we have dealt with change successfully already. So we don't need to hold on to STUFF to deal with every possible contingency, and we don't have to keep things the same as they've always been to be comfortable.
My, I'm certainly flattering myself this evening, aren't I?
Incidentally, R's daughter SE is an excellent driver for a young person, and her Prius was very comfortable to ride in.
I got a free ride up to New York - door to door, in fact - with another friend, R, who also still lives in the town we all grew up in, although not in the same house as he lived in as a teenager (my friend S lives in the same house she has lived in all her life except when she's been out of state at college.) And R is also a person with a serious house clutter problem. I am referring to these as clutter, but it's really closer to hoarding, like animal hoarding - think Collier brothers. Really. And I did some thinking about what might be behind the compulsive need to keep stuff, and why, even though
squirrel_magnet and I are packrats to some extent, we have never had that kind of major problem.What it is, I think, is worry about the future. S is still too attached to the past, holding on to all her parents' and grandparents' stuff; while intellectually she knows she won't forget them if she gives away some of their stuff, she doesn't feel it in her gut, and also, she's afraid that if she gives away something, it might be the one thing she needs in the future. She doesn't deal really well with change, and thinking about the future not being exactly like the present means change, and she doesn't want to deal with it. R, on the other hand, lives too much in the future. Partly, 'cause that's his job; he runs a technology-forecasting business. But, he's saved every piece of paper he's had for the past 35 years, just in case the information on it might be useful. Well, if anyone could make use of it, it's him - but it would take several lifetimes more than any of us have, to make use of that much STUFF. He is hoarding information and data to use in the future, but far beyond any future he will live through. His way of dealing with the future is to attempt to be the person who knows more about it than anybody else, and his information addiction is part of that. If somehow one could convince him to take the time away from other things to scan all that paper into electronic form, or at least microfilm, he wouldn't have much of a problem after that. But, he never has free time to do that, because he's busy dealing with the future. And S is trying to keep things in the past.
And why don't Squirrel and I have a problem? Because we live pretty much in the present. We have enough to get by; we don't feel we have to have ever more stuff in order to brace ourselves against change. We wouldn't mind having a little more money squirreled away for the future, but we aren't afraid of the future in general. We figure that we'll be able to deal with it - pretty much like my little side quote from Aurelius. We assume that we know how to find stuff, and if we need stuff in the future, we'll find it then. We assume that we can remember our past. We start from the assumption that we can deal with change, because we have dealt with change successfully already. So we don't need to hold on to STUFF to deal with every possible contingency, and we don't have to keep things the same as they've always been to be comfortable.
My, I'm certainly flattering myself this evening, aren't I?
Incidentally, R's daughter SE is an excellent driver for a young person, and her Prius was very comfortable to ride in.
