Mindful Materialism
Via DALL-E 2
Recently, as some of you know, I wrote a short essay in defense of “clutter,” for The New York Times Sunday Opinion section. (And this week I talked about it on Marketplace Morning Report.) This got more response than I was expecting! Hence today’s TAoN dispatch.
While I of course saw this piece as connected to the new Lost Objects book that Josh Glenn and I co-edited, I was not thinking about it being related to TAoN. But some of the feedback has made me realize that there is a connection of sorts.
In a nutshell: clearly people disagree about the value and meaning (or lack thereof!) of idiosyncratic personal objects. Some treasure them, others purge them because “it’s just stuff.” I heard from both sides, including many instances in which partners had opposing views — I think I accidentally fueled a slew of spousal disputes :) Sorry!!
More seriously, as I processed the responses, I wondered if perhaps there’s another way of thinking about this subject, one with a TAoN spirit. For short, I’m calling it mindful materialism.
Today I’ll share a couple of preliminary thoughts on this theme, which I hope to explore further in the weeks ahead — so I hope you’ll weigh in!
People who had a problem with the piece — which I’m not going to rehash, but this “gift link” shoud work if you want to read it — often referenced clutter overloads and borderline hoarding; more than one mentioned storage units full of possessions. At least one naysayer specifically positioned material objects as an enemy of the engaged life that TAoN encourages: “Think of the money, time, and attention you’ll have when you declutter.”
Okay. But my longtime collaborator Josh Glenn and I have been exploring the connection between objects and personal meaning for years, through a series of projects involving hundreds of writers and artists and creators and thinkers. While we certainly get the “material things aren’t important to me” response from some potential contributors, most have remarkable, thoughtful, insightful, moving, meaningful stories about objects that frequently look an awful lot like clutter.
In fact, there is a prompt in The Art of Noticing book directly related to this:
Identify the Weirdest Thing in the Room, and Ask About It
Whether you are in someone’s home, office, or business, determine which is the most inexplicable and unlikely object you can see. Then ask, “So what’s the story with that?” Chances are, a memorable tale will follow.
This prompt was inspired by Glenn’s earlier book Taking Things Seriously, collecting scores of short essays about unusual objects of personal significance that would not be obviously significant to anybody else. In other words, not the latest luxury-design totem or cutting-edge gizmo, but the weird tchotchke that occupies a surprising place of pride on the living-room mantel or an office desk. Examples from that book:
An odd foam construction that one designer displays is actually the packaging for a Grammy Award.
Novelist Lydia Millet keeps a ridiculous plastic dog figurine because of its unlikely association with a passionate romance.
A comically huge trophy turns out to be a gesture of apology awarded by a guilty boyfriend who missed a birthday party.
Cartoonist Bill Griffith has kept a decades-old empty bottle of an obscure soda called Zippy that he found on the street—because it inspired the logo for his popular comic strip.
You get the idea. The oddest things can have the best stories — and the most meaning.
I think there’s a connection to be made between this exercise, and what I’m calling mindful materialism.
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