Americans are a strange people. We accumulate things we don’t need, discover we have no more space to contain them, and find that we cannot let them go. So we put them in storage units. Content that our things are in a safe place, we lock the door and rarely give them another thought. They remain tucked away, out of sight and out of mind, but they are still ours. Rather than give them away or sell them, we find that keeping things we may never see again somehow gives us peace of mind. David Owen explores this pathology in his essay “The American Religion of Self-Storage Facilities.”
The self-storage business in America is alive and well. Owen writes: “People who work in self-storage often say that their market is driven by ‘the four D’s’: death, displacement, divorce, and downsizing, all life events that entail sudden collisions between stuff accumulation and reality.”
If I had to guess why we can’t let go of things, it’s because we can’t let go of the thing’s connection to some dream or aspiration we have. For example, I have a pair of barely worn blue jeans hanging in my closet. I haven’t worn them in more than eight years because I cannot get them around my waist. But the jeans represent my skinny, disciplined, well-mannered, handsome self. Someday, I tell myself, I’ll be able to wear them again. Meanwhile, they sit in my closet reeking of mothballs.
I need to let go of my delusions. I need to look reality in the eye and let go of the clutter.
This kind of streamlining adds depth to the notion of retirement. You’re not just retiring from the workforce. You’re relinquishing childish notions about yourself. As a result, you’re becoming a person who has entered a new dimension of clarity, stripped of delusions and bloated storage units.
Retiring means you’re leaving the accumulation cycle and replacing it with decumulation. The less baggage you carry, the stronger you are as you face the challenges of your sixties and beyond.
Accumulating things you don’t need in old age is kryptonite. All of that physical weight translates into heavy mental baggage. You feel lethargic at the mere thought of accumulated junk and the squandered dreams that junk represents.
Putting your stuff in a storage unit merely pushes the problem a few miles away. You can still feel the weight. You are still exhausted by the kryptonite even as you dutifully pay the monthly storage bill to keep it safely out of sight.
Retirement means more than collecting Social Security. It means letting go.
Cinemorphosis 