Territorial Bloggings

In the interest of having a non-AI posting, here are some not-quite-random musings based on something that occurred to me recently…

In the course of cleaning my office area in a sub-basement of the palatial Schloß T.B., I realized that I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff. One might even say, you know, crap. And it got me to thinking…

I’m a bit of a pack-rat, although not quite as bad as I could’ve been, given some of the hoarding tendencies on the paternal branches of my family tree. I’m also given to bouts of melancholic nostalgia from time to time (from that same pesky side of the family tree…), and have been as far back as I can remember. Finally, I’ve always been fascinated by History, having majored in that as an undergrad. At least one out three ain’t bad.

Not surprisingly, I’ve got a lot of books. But I’ve also got a lot of other junk, like magazines, clippings, knick-knacks, keepsakes, LPs, 45s, cassettes, etc… that I’ve kept through various moves “just because”. I’ve weeded quite a bit out over the years, to be sure, because I’ve got an almost OCD-ish streak that kicks in every so often, wherein the clutter gets to me & I have to simplify & go a little more aesthetically ascetic (I get this from my Dad, right bigsis?).

Anyway, all this is prelude to my main musings.

Over the course of pondering & cogitating on why I keep so much stuff around, it gradually hit me — While related in a certain way, History & Nostalgia are two very different things. And I would, if only to be provocatively binary, posit that History is good, while Nostalgia is bad.

By which I mean simply that my collection of books is a positive thing to have & maintain, largely because it represents the aspect of civilization whereby we record significant things and then build analyses that help propel us forward to greater understanding. It’s an outward-focused orientation. It’s how we learn. It’s how we grow. It’s good.

Nostalgia, on the other hand, is more of an inward-focused orientation. It is represented in all of the other “stuff” that I’ve kept around in boxes. Boxes that, upon opening, cause me to get lost in the minutia of my very personal past. I dwell. I relive. I obsess. I analyze. To no significant end. It induces a “paralysis through analysis”. Rarely do these journeys into the past yield any grist for the future-building mill. It’s all about me. It’s all about the past. It’s bad.

I don’t want to slough of everything that is nostalgic in nature, mind you. Rather, I think this revelation can help me determine better what to keep & what to jettison. When I’m dead & gone, most (if not almost all, at the risk of overstatement) of what I’ve kept will not be of any real value or interest to my kids. A few things will, of course, be of great significance to them, just like there are a few things from my parents that will no doubt be of interest & significance to me. I’m just not convinced at this point that it will be even a significant minority of the things they’ve stored away.

Maybe I’m wrong, and someday I’ll regret this realization. Maybe not. At this point, though, I think I’m willing to take the risk…

-ghp