Every life bears within itself a multitude of situations and incidents which bear meaning to us — and which in turn lead to an accumulation of items. As fragile minds who fear to lose memories that we hold dear, we use all sorts of things as “keepsakes” — items which we project certain feelings onto, items that then hold within themselves the essence of an emotion we want to hold on to. Now, over years of living life, feeling (almost) everything the range of human emotion has to offer, I have collected a number of knickknacks that, when I look at them, trigger a memory, an emotion, a sort of flashback in me and help me remember.
I know for a fact that I’m not the only person with the habit of, let’s call it “subconsciously fearful collecting”. A dumpee keeps his or her lover’s sweater after they broke up, in order to keep something of theirs to remember them by. A tourist picks up a seashell at the shore (why would She even sell seashells by the sea shore, I wonder) to remember the fabulous time he or she has had on holiday upon returning back home to a life that’s maybe just a little less colourful. A girl presses and holds on to a flower she picked on a walk with someone she adores, to not forget the feeling he gives her. She projects that particular feeling onto the flower. Which is now dead.

We are afraid to forget. And honestly? We have every reason to be. Memories degrade with the passing of time. This phenomenon is called Transience and happens to, yes, everybody.
Unless one retrieves a memory continuously and repeatedly over time, it will fade and might at some point even be erased from our memory storage unit, the brain. Emotional events are rooted deeper in our memory than “neutral” events. They are therefore easier to re-access and more vivid for a longer period of time. We usually have no problem remembering events like our first great love, our wedding day or, stepping into the opposite direction, our first heartbreak or the death of a loved one.
Even for events as powerful and ever-present as these we tend to collect items to remember them by. A wedding band. The last love letter before the break up. A menu card from the dance event you got your first kiss at (technically it might have been theft — emotionally it definitely wasn’t — anyways, I wasn’t caught). These things float around in our lives and after a while clutter everything.

Sitting on my bed and looking at my top shelf, the one that holds all my Musical memorabilia, I realised that I have too much in my life. Too many things that lead my brain astray and take away focus from what is to come. The ever present fear of forgetting something that might at some point have been important cripples me from time to time and I shake the clammy paralysis by rustling through my chest of memories (yes, I have that).
It’s a large wooden chest that sits next to my armchair. I don’t open it often, but when I do, my brain gets a rush of memories from the most peculiar items, like a tiny dice my friend gave me after months of mocking me for my indecisiveness. “Here, I made you a decision-making-machine, you can take it everywhere!” — sadly that friendship didn’t last, which is all the more reason to keep the small item, the only thing left of years of togetherness.

Or is it?

I realised, holding the dice in my hand that, no matter how many things I accumulate over the years, I will never be able to remember everything forever, and more importantly: I don’t want to remember everything forever.

So I started taking notes, writing down things instead of collecting things. It helped to the degree that I don’t keep everything I deem even slightly fraught with meaning.
And still I realised that in order to free space on my hard drive (and my room) I had to get rid of “things” and shake off the slavery of gizmos and keepsakes altogether.
The Art of Reducing, as I pompously call it for myself, as I’m sure someone else before me has coined the phrase, is not easy to master and requires a will of steel. Because when I finally held that sweater in my hand and had to lift my arm to put it in the rubbish bag, I hesitated.

“Do I toss out this jumper that reminds me of both joy and heartbreak or do I keep it for another ten years, maybe getting it out every once in a while, maybe showing it to my children when they ask me about my first great love?”

Without further hesitation I threw it out. I know I will never be able to fully forget something as cutting as this whole ordeal and the fact that I kept the jumper for so long only makes my mind lazy. We relax on memorabilia and rob our brain of the chance to live up to its potential.
It starts with a jumper that holds memory. It goes on to ticket stumps from concerts we liked and movies we’ve enjoyed. But the Art of Reducing, of making space in our lives and minds is more than just that. The logical conclusion is to reduce until, and that is the cracking point for many, one’s life is simple.
Make room inside yourself for new experiences, make room in your living space for your thoughts to unwind and stand still in the vast space between your bed and — nothing for miles.
Reducing; I gave away half of my clothes, shoes, I threw out “keepsakes”. Looking at the word itself even tells us: we only keep for keeping’s sake — I’m not having it anymore.

I’m still fearful of forgetting. Sometimes I frantically search for something I know holds a certain memory but I am so caught up in looking for the item that I don’t realise: I know what memory and what emotion I’m looking for. The item is just my safety net.
Memory is a tricky little thing and it can’t be trusted unless we trust it (I know, I know).
If we don’t teach our memory to function by giving it the chance to do just that, we have no other possibility than to collect and collect until our mind (and eventually space) bursts at the seams.
The Art of Reducing starts with ourselves and leads to a special kind of liberation: the kind that leaves room for tomorrow.