Sunday, May 29, 2022

Everything I Need, and Some Things I Don’t

 

Zac Brown Band, “Homegrown”



I’ve got everything I need
And nothing that I don’t


The song stands on its own but the best thing for me is that lyric which is actually great life advice, if you’re looking for it.

It took me about 5 decades to realize it — or maybe to turn into one — but I am a minimalist (or “minimalist-adjacent”) who likes less stuff around me for better mental and emotional health.

But the process of living your life, especially raising a family, brings a constant flow of stuff in the front door, and after a couple decades the “it might be useful someday, put it in the basement” system stops working and you suddenly realize that “something new comes in, something old goes out” is far superior.

The only thing I would care about saving in a house fire — after family and pets of course — is photos. Everything else can be replaced. 

But we have SO many photos … and most of them just sit in boxes in a dark closet 24x7x365. 

So I ask myself, what good are they, like that? Who does that help? What value are they adding to our lives? Almost zero.

Photos are only useful when you look at them. This is obvious but it raises an important point: the time that these photos spend sitting in boxes is a series of missed opportunities.

Each of us only has so much time here on this planet — opportunities missed are opportunities lost.