Ambivalent OUCH

The way I figure it, this is my 9th significant "purge and pack" life-altering move. I won't go into all the others, but suffice it to say, this is the third time I've done it where Japan was involved.

"Purge and pack?" you ask? Oh, you know "purge and pack". This is where you sift through each of your worldly belongings, donate or throw away a significant amount of stuff that you thought, once upon a time, you could not live without ( greeting cards from days gone by, solo earrings that lost their twin, the collection of travel coffee mugs from all the major gasoline chains, or the five incomplete decks of playing cards).

Could someone tell me why we kept not one, but 4 empty UC Santa Cruz labeled champagne bottles from our 1989 graduation? Would not one suffice? Or perhaps you could tell me why I decided to keep, not just Aya's intact old barbie dolls, but also the ones that had been beheaded, tattooed with Sharpie or had received, shall we say, severe hair cuts?

These are the types of questions I am asking myself as I not only "purge and pack" out of our house, but also out of my classroom. My pal and team teacher Amy and I spent roughly 8 hours last week purging and packing, heaving furniture and shoving boxes. Minutes would while away while I tried to figure out what to do with the fraction circle set that was missing two of the eight eights, or pondered how to part ways with the intensely loved, satisfyingly thick book of brilliant planet and space photographs--from which the binding had totally lost cohesion, and on which pages 62 to 84 had been doused in what appeared to have been apple juice or especially sticky water. Possibly hand sanitizer. Hmmm.

Both at home and at school, as with all of my previous life-altering moves, I have to stay completely in the moment. Focus on this box, on these books, on that ridiculous pile of 10 year old receipts requiring shredding.

Because while the process of purging is undeniably enlightening and fraught with feelings of excellent freedom, the process of untying the strings that hold us all down to our world is uncomfortable, sometimes to the point of pain. All those beautiful goodbye gifts, all those tiny arms that have been thrown around my neck these past few weeks, seeing that "For Rent" sign being pounded into our front lawn--these point to the unknown.

And as we all know, humans usually dont handle the unknown very well.

Which is perhaps why we weigh ourselves down with THINGS.

THINGS hold us down.

They hold us down to the known. The familiar. To the loved.

Which is why, in 3 to 5 years, I'll be in Japan, packing boxes to once again return to California.

And I'll be asking myself, again and again, "Why on earth did I keep THIS?"

At least now I'll have an answer.