On hoarding

An essay on accumulation, and how destructive can it get.

I thought I was a really big hoarder, I would keep different types of papers from packaging, cute stickers, different sort of beads I randomly find, coins, flowers to be pressed in my favorite novels and my school notebooks just for the sake of it. Mostly, it's because i see potential in things for my 4+ hobbies. Such as textured paper for journalling or beads for wired earrings.

I am currently in my home country for a month and I now understand what hoarding really is. My grandparents, particularly my grandmother, collects and accumulates things from decades. In one way, it's fascinating for me to see such old things. Such as a 1982 version of an English textbook and jewlery at least 4 times older than I am.

This is common in every Asian house probably: reserving the 'special plates' for guests and special occasions. See the thing is, we shouldn't wait for something to happen to use a certain thing. It's like those cute stickers you'd hoard so much as a little girl but never used them because you're waiting for a perfect time, but what if I tell you that using those stickers will make today special, it will make your notebook or journal special. Why do we have to be so hesitant to use things we love? The problem is we force ourselves to wait and wait and then all the years will pass by and we'll wonder why didnt we ever use those beautiful plates.

Hoarding becomes suffocating at one point. Every cupboard is filled with things that are deteriorating while dust piles up over them in layers. Those plates Imentioned earlier, sit in the glass showcase with so much dust over them you'd think their colour is just brown, even though they are really titanium white. Upstairs, under the staircase, there is the storeroom that my parents have been talking about. How everything that does not need to be used at the moment is shoved in there, and no one ever comes to take it out again. It's like a mass grave of some sort. All the objects in there, even though covered with shoppers, start to become fragile and break upon touching, because of Lahore's harsh weather.

It seems like these things have an emotional value, that my grandmother cannot forget. It is not easy to throw away or donate stuff when it submerges you into an ocean that reminds you of everything that has left. Every time I see an old item here, like a rusty keychain, I wonder what emotional significance it has.

At what point does hoarding exceed all bounds (and maybe become a little selfish) ? Just yesterday, my mom was examining the boxes on top of the showcase. With layers of dust on them, we took them out. One of the boxes was a medical kit, a chemo vascular port for cancer patients, that my dad gave to my grandfather a few years back to donate fo a medical institution or a hospital. But it lay on top of the shelf for so many years, that it became expired, and medically unusable. We opened it, cut up all the pipes, broke the needles, tore the manuals because the problem is the people here, who are driven by poverty, will search the bins to find something that could help them, and they will use things even if it's not medically valid to do so. So for the safety of everyone, we destroyed it all. It could have been used a long time ago by someone who was fighting for their life.

You see, the thing is we have this mindset embedded to our fingerprints, that love is an act of hoarding, an act of accumulation, whether it's with objects or people. And while it is true to a certain extent, at one point it becomes destructive, almost like a burden. Everytime you emotionally attach yourself to a person or an object, it only makes the rope longer, meaning you'll never reach the surface. And eventually, when things get bad, this rope will elongate at such a fast rate it will only push you down, when you are trying so hard to climb back up.

Love is liberation, it is to free yourself from everything that's haunted you, whether the past or the future. It is not meant to let you linger in things you do not have control over. If something is not in your use anymore, donate it, help someone else but most importantly, help yourself. Free yourself from the void these objects force you into, before they pile up in a room and become simply unrecognizable. Love is not confinement, love is not to hoard.

love,

afifa