My husband and I have decided to lighten up in more ways than one—and finally live it up.
Vergel is no hoarder of anything, not clothes, not any other personal belongings; he throws away trophies and plaques almost as soon he gets them, but he sure can accumulate books like nobody’s business. Again, as painful as it must be for him each time, he parts with a thousand volumes he has decided he will never read again. He gives most of them to his historical researcher and dear friend, so if he needed any information from them, he could still retrieve it through him.
Now he’s left with fewer than a thousand books. But, as fast a reader as he is, in no time he will be piling up more and again. For now he has emptied several shelves and an old-fashioned bookcase and when that bookcase goes, we will regain some living space in our two-bedroom condominium home.
Better days
For my part, I’ve begun emptying closets of trinkets and decor that have seen better days. That was easy to do, but not getting rid of clothes. Every time I pull out a dress, it brings a pain not just from loss but from surrender: I’ll never go back to that size again.
I’m steadily emptying baul and cabinets, too, and switching to digital filing and preserving. The chore is taking forever; I find myself lingering on old letters and photographs from days when I still could get into the dresses I’m now giving away. I’m an especially bad hoarder in the kitchen. I can’t believe the Pyrexes, baking pans, coffee makers and trays I have had to unload!
Recently, I sold an asset at what seemed to me the perfect time to be more liquid, and found myself saddled with even more stuff to unload. I can only do so much sorting and unloading in a day, but my determination is unshakeable.
Interestingly, I’ve observed that every time we unload stuff
—the last serious time was some 20 years ago, with Vergel alone unloading 1,500 books—it happens when we’re about to face an exciting turning point in our lives.
Well, this time around, in our senior years, we’re more conscious of traveling light, unburdened by material possessions, and also by issues and causes. Passion no longer means what it used to; it means unwavering, but calm commitment, not fleeting intense heat.
Real threats
We are as much bothered as anyone about what’s going on around us. Threats to our freedoms and rights are very real and cannot be simply wished away. The republican government we’ve grown old with seems to be getting in the way of those who want to govern without limits or sanctions or checks. And, disappointingly, the institutions built to stand up to these authoritarian forces seem weak-kneed.
Ironically, the only hope lies in a popular majority who seem confused or misinformed or, worse, fascinated by the perversity of the whole situation. Constantly confronted by untruths and injustices, the rest of us are ourselves in danger of becoming desensitized and in the end losing our power of moral discrimination.
Losing that means also losing the power to resist joining the mob crying out to free the thief rather than the innocent.
Sense of liberation
It’s not easy to feel any lighter thinking of all that. But, as I’ve said, we’re determined. In fact it’s not only our unit that feels light; we ourselves feel light and not only physically and mentally but also spiritually.
A life uncluttered is a liberated one. And that sense of liberation comes upon the realization that one doesn’t need much to live well and that excesses, a merely nicer word for greed, only contribute to another fellow’s poverty.
Again, Lolo Rafael comes from the great beyond to remind me with his simple sense of economics and social justice: “Every time you buy more than you need, you deprive others; when more and more people buy more and more property than they need and they push the prices up, fewer and fewer are able to afford it.”
Indeed, in our little home in airspace, we have all we need, with yet fair prospects for living it up a little—whatever that means at our age and with our limited resources.
