A message from our founder about attaching power to sentimental things…
It irked me that someone might go to Goodwill and buy my #7 Varsity Soccer Jacket from High School. How could I agree to a second hand purchase of four years of memories?
That jacket represented a time of life when I still had the security of restrictions and learned how to operate within them, pushing the limits…but not too far. That bridge between childhood and adulthood when I fought for the right to become the person I wanted to be, but didn’t truly know what kind of person I wanted to be. It reminded me of watching the guidelines fade away, being introduced to the responsibility of freedom, and dealing with the consequences of adult decision making. A glance at that jacket was a snapshot of discovering there’s nothing “hard” about lemonade except the morning after. It represented firsthand insight on ‘heartbreak’ and filling to the brim with disappointment, but being empowered after navigating it. That jacket transported me back in time to sporting events, dances, friends, first loves, and the novelty of life.
Just looking at that article of clothing returned me to a whole other part of myself…a piece that had been lost for so long… a dreamer, a believer, a doer and an achiever….another version of me. For a second I felt lost in my thoughts between my past and present self. “Who am I?” I pondered, but the jacket didn’t have the answer.
We often rely on sentimental objects to transport us to a different stage of life or state of mind, but giving power of that magnitude to the stuff in our lives holds us back from unleashing our own strength. Our power of mind, heart, body and soul diminishes when we transfer it to belongings. Thinking I needed to keep a varsity jacket that I hadn’t worn in years is the perfect example. I didn’t consciously believe that the jacket would reactivate the best part of my previous self. Why did I continue to keep it rolled up in a Tupperware container in my basement?
I felt like that article held the key to my youth, my freedom and my innocence. It symbolized a rose-colored glasses view of the world, and a stress free life void of marriage, children, and a career. I was giving a high level of significance and power to a physical item.
What I failed to realize at that time was that my youth, freedom and innocence had never been up for grabs. They weren’t taken from me. They were parts of myself that I unknowingly suppressed as a right of passage to the next phase of life. The jacket was just a symbol of that era. At any point, we can trigger dimensions of our old selves to come back. Thoughts, feelings, and memories are ours forever to hide or to activate, and a jacket is just a jacket. You are not your stuff.
