How attached are you to all of your possessions?

How attached are you to all of your possessions?  This is a question I've been asking myself for a while now.  Two years ago next month, I lost my home of 30 years.  It was weighing heavy on my mind for weeks.  What would I do with my stuff?  Could I keep anything?  Things I collected for years that were special to me were in danger of being lost.

In my old home state of California, a place I hope to be able to go back to again one day soon, fires have devastated neighborhoods.  People had to leave with just the clothes on their back and await news on the fate of their homes.  Some were lucky, but others got the bad news.  The fire destroyed everything.

Many of us are sentimental about one thing or another.  You can replace clothing, TV's and things like that, but there are things you collect through the years that are not as easy to replace.  Photo albums and that sort of thing are irreplaceable.  There are store bought things that we purchased years ago.  They aren't easy to find anymore.  Most people have something important to them.

I had family invite me to stay with them temporarily while I tried to figure out what to do next.  In the midst of that was pressure from an uncle to get out.  I never would have been there if not for my aunt, and that made it more stressful on top of losing my home and still grieving over my father.  I was able to keep most of the possessions important to me.

The pressure to leave was so great that I had to jump at the first offer thrown my way, despite the fact that it was not something I would have opted for if I had time to choose.  It was a place to say in another state.  So, I packed some of my stuff and left.  The rest was stored in a room in a shop.  The problem was I had no way to go get it and no money to have it shipped to me.  I've since found out that they threw it out.  My brother picked through a few things for me, but the rest is gone.  Just like that.

I feel anger over this, but I'm also numb.  There's not a damn thing I can do about it, and I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that given my economic position, this is as good as life is going to be for me.  Possession of things and ownership is a man made thing.  I'm not speaking against that.  We obviously need the basics, shelter, food and clothing, but our money driven society has us collecting many things we probably don't even need.  We just think we do, perhaps due to the marketing drilled into our brains that it will somehow make our lives better.

Did I need all that I had left behind?  Probably not.  I lived without it for almost two years.  There were clothes among those boxes that I could use now as my things are wearing out. There are little things I collected that remind me of some moment in my life when I was happy.  However, they won't improve my life now.  I'm still saddened by yet another loss.  How attached to your stuff are you?  Could you willingly give it up?  We should remember we were born into this world naked and with nothing. The only thing we take with us when we die is our memories.