This may just be a “me thing”, but a decluttering-related musing I’d like to share in case it resonates with anyone else.
‘what is “historicity”?’
'When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing … You can’t tell which is which. There’s no “mystical plasmic presence”, no “aura” around it.
- The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, pages 65-66
The Man in the High Castle is an excellent, weird book, but I’ve noticed that the concept of “historicity” is present in much more mundane places than the kind of cultural artifacts it’s used in reference to in the book. Like in family heirlooms and some of my own “sentimental” items.
An example, I have a “sentimental trinkets” box on my bedside table. Inside, I had a toy that I played with as a small child over 25 years ago, but I didn’t have any specific memories attached to it. I just knew I’d had it decades and moved continents with it, so I assumed it was precious. In hindsight it wasn’t sentimental at all, it was the historicity that made me keep it. So I stopped keeping it.
Another toy in that box that I’d also had over 25 years has a specific memory and story attached and makes me smile when I think about it, but it’s not even the same toy that features in the memory. And because the primary association is with that story and that memory, I don’t think of it as “a toy I’ve had since I was 4”, I think of it as “the toy bought to replace the identical one I lost in the ocean and picked up a live crab while searching for it”.
As a lover of museums and archeology I don’t think historicity is a bad concept to value when it’s on a more grand, cultural scale, but within one lifetime I’ve learned to appreciate the distinction and let go of things that aren’t actually valuable.
An interesting distinction. I think the idea of “historicity” ties in with a tendency to keep things that other people owned - like keeping all of the clothes that were in a parent’s cupboard when they died.
Sentimental items are also interesting, and I think it is worth worth exploring how sentiment and memories are also not inherent iin the object - the stories and memories are within us, and the object can act as a memory trigger but are not meaninful within themselves. What we often fail to examine is whether keeping a trigger for those memories is actually beneficial to us.
There is a limit to how much time we can spend re-living the past before it starts to detract from the present. An occasional afternoon trip down memory lane with a photo album is fine, but just like physical objects can overtake our space so there is no room for us to live our lives, memories can take over and stop us living in the present. It is a matter of balance. As an example, spending time remembering your children’s childhool and what it was like when they were a baby may be wonderful, but too much of that takes away the time you could spend fostering the relationship you have with them now. Taken to extremes you can destroy your current relationship with your children in pursuit of remembering the past. (I saw an episode of Hoarder’s once that had a woman who collected dolls to represent her children which she spent time with reminiscing about the past. She said she needed them because her children had moved away and had little contact with her, but her children were there trying to help and she turned her back on them to focus on the dolls and her memories. That is the extreme end result of too much “sentimental attachment” and focussing on memories of the past.)
The other thing to consider is whether keeping physical objects is the best way of keeping our memories alive. I would argue that the best way of holding on to our past is through our relationships with others. It might be through catching up with old friends and talking about the past with people who share your memories, or it might be through telling stories about your past with new friends and aquaintences. In doing this we both keep the past alive and strengthen the present - some of our stories may even be passed on further and live on in the future.
I doubt any parent dreams that when they pass on their children will keep every item of clothing in their wardrobe becaue of their “sentimental value”. But being remembered through passing on anecdotes about the fancy hat you wore to the races or the matching jumpers you made everyone wear at Christmas? I think that is something to wish for.
it’s a struggle to know what to hold on to, like data in a museum, or books in a library, versus what to discard…
a lot of minimalists or declutters might want to get rid of physical books personally but they probably hope or want some entity like the library of Congress to be “hoarding” books or storing them, so it becomes difficult to know what to retain versus get rid of
There is definitely an underlying assumption that everything is infinitely replaceable or accessible, especially for books and media, which is simply not true. But starting from the assumption that everything is valuable is just as bad. If you can identify where the value actually lies for you it can help.
E.g. for me the thing that’s valuable is knowing what I thought of a book when I read it and how it made me feel, because my memory is very poor. Now I’ve started keeping a digital notebook with a private review of each thing I read, so I only have to keep books I want to read again. Which is still a lot, but much less than it was.
