What if you had to live with only 50 things?
Someone had this idea that 50 is enough possessions for a healthy life. They obviously had no idea what they’re on about. We’d like to even keep our bills and air tickets, thank you very much
It is a sobering thought that though we all set the virtues of spartan living to music, the average amongst us may have a thousand possessions. The more ‘fortunate,’ if one can use that word, would rise to over 10 times that. Amazing how we still see ourselves as managing on the bare essentials — like we believe in the virtues of simple living. Yeah sure. We don’t think of it actively, but the obsession with ownership is universal. The more we have, the more we consider it to be a measure of our selfworth. It is like we look around and feel good that all this is ours.
So, what if one day, there was a certain celestial diktat that each one of us could only have 50 items and that is it. Not 51, sorry, that’s it. What would you take, how would you even begin to whittle down the mountain of things in your name and still get through the day? I suppose it is worth a try even though 50 looks like a pretty decent number. Give it a shot and you will realise that you reach that number while you are still in the starting gate, with reference to what you have at present. Fifty is small potatoes.
I guess our E-toys would go in the carry bag first. Between mobile phones, iPads, laptops and accessories (yes, they count, earphones too), plus the battalion of chargers that run our lives, we would have crossed the ten mark before even beginning the count.
The car comes next — you have to travel — and it’s one item, not seats and tyres and engines. Likewise, with books. Take a reasonable selection and make it a singular possession otherwise the game is lost already.
Then you look around your room. Carpets, curtains, bedsheets, pillows, the bed, chairs, tables, the telly, the satellite boxes, plugs and wires, extension cords, paintings on the walls, framed photographs, suitcases, handbags, the desktop, the mouse. What about medicines? We cannot leave these behind, we need them, they’re essentials. Likewise, the stuff on us — like watches and spectacles, shoes and coats and dresses and socks… this is ridiculous, 50 is approaching like a runaway train.
Cheque book, money, ID, driving licence, passport, and we haven’t even gone to the other rooms yet. Like what? The décor stuff, all those glasses and cups and plates and knives and forks and figurines and crystal vases and gilt edged tables and linen and napkins and spoons.
Then the bathroom. No way, I can cross 50 in 10 seconds. Move to kitchen. Don’t get me started. Do not even open the fridge door.
Way past the allowed number and we haven’t even opened a drawer yet. I once thought of engaging in a springcleaning exercise. Get rid of the stuff you haven’t seen or used for 90 days — that being the universal yardstick for what you don’t need.
So see how good you feel, it is catharsis, good feng shui and vaastu, read about the restorative powers of spring cleaning. It is an energy revival, out with the used airline boarding passes, the matchbook from the Astoria with two sticks left over, scores of Post-it notes, invitations to weddings where the couples have already gotten divorced or have three children.
A card to a Cirque du Soleil performance from 2014 because you cannot just throw it away. A bill from etisalat and a sheaf of paid print outs for DEWA — there must have been good reason to keep them, so no, think, why, don’t just throw? Credit cards that died a dusty death but are still roomed in your drawer and let’s not even talk about the 300 visiting cards of people whom you will never meet again and whose names mean nothing to you. Who the heck is MK Mundul from Tiptop Enterprises.
Ball pens where the ink has solidified, the spotty ace of hearts from a missing pack, two tiles from a scrabble game and a pawn from a chessboard long forgotten. I also discovered halfused sticky tape, a dried up tube of superglue, a strip of staples but no gun, pencil stubs, mini-diaries outdated by five years, an invitation to a show from 2004, a letter of thanks from the principal of a school for your attendance last summer to their annual day and bent out-of-shape paper clips half-frosted with rust.
Don’t forget the three other necessities. The first is keys, scores of them and you have no idea what great treasure they open, but locks vanish and the keys stay. Then the diaries and address books, little ones, big ones, loose ones, can’t fling them away, stuff in there might be of value.
Photographs from a time when memories were not auto-bursts but fuzzy monochrome efforts of grand delight.
None of these did I throw because you just can’t. So whoever had this crazy idea that 50 is a good limit for a healthy life, go become an ascetic. Me, I will hug my e-ticket from our last vacation to Sri Lanka along with the hotel bill… why? Because it was a great holiday, that’s why. letters@khaleejtimes.com Bikram is a former editor of KT. Everyday humour is his forte