Minimalism, or, Detachment

I’ve been reflecting a lot on detachment.

AKA minimalism.

AKA decluttering.

The opposite of hoarding.

What we Catholics call: the virtue of detachment.

I gave a book to a friend once, and she thanked me and said to me that I give of my books generously, and I thought, What?

It was both a rebuke and the kernel of an idea in a time of great conversion.

I had this clean out, clean out, clean out driving my soul a few months ago. Like a refrain I couldn’t get out.

Hm.

I realized it had to start with the books.

Of course it did. I, the English major, had become a book hoarder. I loved them too much. They had been the companions of a lonely youth and so I had many old friends in them and they were spilling out of boxes and bookshelves and closet shelves and for goodness’ sakes, my possessions were straddling two rooms in my mom’s house instead of one, which is rather ridiculous and selfish, and I had been meaning to go through them for six months, but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t, I had scrimped and saved to buy them myself during college and because I hadn’t read them all all the way through, I worried that I might need them someday.

I was rather a perfectionist and a worrier.

But then I weighed that against the virtue of generosity. And a desire for poverty.

Poverty, you see, clears the mind. I suspect this is why Marie Kondo is so popular and the show Hoarders is so painful to watch. I wonder if all Americans feel this tension of too much stuff, stuff, stuff…..it overflows our dumpsters and our landfills and the shelves of Goodwill.

We are ridiculously blessed in this country.

I can feel it weighing on me sometimes, the actual weight of so many possessions and the stress of where to put them all and how to take care of them all and and and and…

Decluttering is one of my favorite things. Don Aslett has many great books on it.

I love minimalism, order, and clarity.

Anyway, I started going through the books. I sifted out the stack of evil books, the stack of children’s books for future gifts to nieces and nephews, the stack of spiritual books I had been meaning to read for a good long time and might need to read in future, and put those aside in respective piles. The rest I took pictures of and posted them on Discord, of course.

And my friends made their selections and walked away with stacks and stacks that Advent. And my nieces and nephews got a few that are quite wonderful and age-appropriate. And I found great joy in that.

And for some reason…

For some reason, I find that people keep on giving them to me. And I keep on making book recommendations to friends. And if I ever need a copy of something, I can get the cheap secondhand version off Amazon or from Goodwill, so I don’t stress it anymore. And I keep on giving, and giving, and giving them to people.

And this brings me great joy.

And I read my Bible a lot. That contains all God’s best creative nonfiction — the ways He speaks to various peoples throughout the ages about Himself, and to me today. It’s pretty inspiring to me too, since I’m a writer — it has all the genres. “Bible” literally means “the book” as in, the book. Like, the most important book. But really it’s a whole library, a collection of all the best books.