Day Eleven: Stuff

This whole post is, of course, with apologies to the late, great George Carlin.

As you grow older, you accumulate a lot of stuff. At first, it's kind of cool--stuff is great. You buy books and games and music and electronics; eventually you get some big stuff, like a car or even a house; and then you fill the house with more and more stuff, like pots and pans and bedroom sets and couches and bookcases. Meanwhile, you continue to buy and otherwise obtain the little stuff--more books and games and knick-knacks and random other stuff that clogs up everything.

And eventually, enough is enough.

But this doesn't happen only with physical stuff. It happens with informational stuff, too. Again, as you get older, you learn more and more, you cram piece after piece of random information into your brain (and nothing falls out, really, but some of it becomes a whole lot less accessible). You start out with the basic stuff, useful stuff, like multiplication tables and grammar, eventually you get into more advanced stuff, but all the while, you're also accumulating random stuff (locker numbers, passwords, what spot you parked your car in) and useless stuff (your favorite news story goes here).

And eventually, enough is enough.

For both physical stuff and informational stuff, at some point, it's time to clean house. At least with the physical stuff, you can get rid of it; for the informational stuff, the best you can do is control your intake so that it's the quality stuff that you're consuming. For both types of stuff, the key is to pare down to what's necessary: to simplify as much as possible, but no more (to quote a smart guy). Focus on what matters.

For me, this is what cutting out news amounts to.

Postscript--Although it doesn't really fit into the flow of the post, there's a third kind of stuff--emotional stuff. It also accumulates as you get older, and, like the informational stuff, there's not much you can do to get rid of it--once you have it, it's yours for life.