Getting Older

When was the last time you went though all of your stuff, your life, your junk? When was the last time you looked at those old photos and could name each person in the photo? When was the last time you cleaned out your card drawer, you know the one, the one filled with the cards you've gotten over the years. The cards you never read, cards from friends no longer friends?
When was the last time you did a clean sweep and tossed that newspaper clipping or postcard from London? Have you tagged your photos? Put them in a photo album or scrap booked anything? Have you done anything to keep your memories other then acutally keeping them? Have you done anything to preserve your past? Or will one day someone go into your house and start opening boxes with items that are moldy with age and dusty with neglet? Will your children go though old boxes of loose photos and wonder "who is this? or "what is this even of"? Will they take your memories and toss them life yesterdays paper into the trash? Will they stand in wonder in your bedroom surrounded by your most loved stuff and wonder "What the f?
Will they think you're crazy by looking under your bed, behind your shoes in your clothes or in some box stowed away under the sink? Will everything you hold dear now, be something that makes your family scoff? I wonder, do we all need the things we have? Do we really need the items in the shoebox from an old lover? Do we really need the photos of the first plant we ever grew or the matchbox from our first bar? Maybe we do and maybe we don't. Maybe keeping one to these things makes us feel better, makes us remember. Maybe knowing that that shoebox is there is good enough and who cares what happens to it when we're gone. I think that maybe it's time we all lightened the load. Maybe it's time we all went though our life like our children were going though it. Would they really want the things we're leaving behind or will it be more of a burden on them?
I love photos, i really do. But photos without labels or not in photo albums? What about those photos that have been in my hat box in my storage for the last 10 years? Will I ever really look at those? Really? I think it would be a great gift to clean out our lives, lessen what we have to pack. If life is a journey don't you want to travel light?