This thing is turning into a sort of diary at the moment... Well, today I started going through EVERYTHING I own (which is depressingly little, but still too much to fit into a 20kg suitcase). I had three piles; throw away, definitely keep, and not sure. Sentimental wotsits (things, not the crisps... I don't tend to grow emotionally attached to cheese flavoured snacks, no matter how moreish they are) went in the definitely keep pile, actual rubbish (bits of paper, bank statements from 1994, the bizarre and vast collection of empty cigarette packets) went straight in the bin, and everything else went into the not sure pile. Literally. I don't wear blusher... yet for some reason, rather than throw away the blusher thing, I put it in the not sure pile, and it was then transfered into the keep pile, as for some reason, I thought that despite my 23 year long blusher drought, I might wear some tomorrow.
This has led me to the interesting conclusion, that I, like most, am far too attached to material posessions. It's a sign of the times, I think; we define who we are by what we own. In reality, I could probably throw away most things, and survive with the bare essentials (some changes of underwear), and my iPod. In my opinion, the iPod (or other MP3 player) is more than a status thing, or a posession, it really is something that defines you as a person. Not because it's expensive, or a fashionable thing to have, but because so much of who we are can be found in our music tastes. The songs that make us cry (Jeff Buckley, Lover, You Should Have Come Over), the songs we HAVE to sing along to (Hotel California, The Eagles), the songs that we HAD to dance to at seventeen (Black Eyed Peas, My Humps) and the songs that just remind us of who we are (everything on it, I think). It's strange, really, we define who we are the most by the things we posess, but the thing that defines me the most is something I don't even own, it's something I borrow from the musicians who choose to share it with me. It's someone else saying 'this is what my life feels like, can you identify with it?', and if you do, you borrow it from time to time, and feel a little more because of it.
This might all be because I am a rather serious music afficionado. I don't know much about Mozart, but give me a Paul Weller album and I'm your friend for life (You Do Something To Me, makes me die a little bit inside, in a good way). I suppose it just made me wonder how others define themselves... and the realisation that I don't need six packets of blusher that I don't wear, to be able to consider myself a fully functioning person, might make tomorrow a more successful 'throw-away-day'.
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