Stuff from Past

Clearing the old cupboard, throwing away memories, keeping those with sentimental value is a mental exercise of deciding what to keep and what to let go.

Items from false friendships are the easiest to be swollen by the dust bin. You wonder why you keep them so long, maybe cos you never have a need to house clean until now.

Greeting cards, photos and letters from time of a younger you surprise you by how kind, sweet, and intense is the memory from a time when life is less hectic and a very blur you are.

The sweetest are a bunch of letters from a friend about her suffering in the last days of her study. Reading them bring a smile to your face and how you could had done more to help her. She is happier now, flying between HK and SG, following her hubby. Quietly, you filed them away, locking away a evidence of past memories for future enjoyment and potential smile.

Next, photos from a birthday outing with a crush bring a smile to your face . You wonder if you should keep them, for the married her look the same as before in that photo and you silly entertained the thought of asking her if she wants them. Laughing quietly, you tenderly close the small album and move it to the same pile of stuff to flow into the dust bin.

The most difficult are those that evoke a double feelings of happiness past and deep pain now. Keeping means assigning to them and remembering those special happy moments in the past and yet feeling the deep pains that they bring now. You can decides that you can either drop them away into a deep storage, to be discovered and to be decide again in the future or simply discard them now.

You never realise how sentimental you are until you see the amount of memories and stuff you have around once they are unpacked. You smiled as you realised that you are not alone as most human are sentimental to certain degree.

Some stuff to be kept and some stuff to be clear so that the new ones can came in.