Simple Sustainability: You are what you do
by Sky Trombly –“You are what you do.”
How many of us have heard this assertion? This little nugget of wisdom? I always found it trite and un-instructive. Some even find this assertion dangerous.
I recently discovered it to be key in pushing me out of a de-cluttering slump.
Media has tried very hard to change the script, trying to get us to think that “we are what we have”. So we buy more. We need to buy the right house, car, books, clothes… The right ones are those that paint the image of ourselves that we’d like to show the world.
This creates endless wants and inflates the sense of “enough” until it is bloated and uncomfortable.
No, thank you. I prefer “you are what you do” and there are a few reasons for this. But first, I must deal with its largest critique:
What you “do” means what “job” you have and it is dangerous and unhealthy to equate yourself with your job.
While I agree that it can be unhealthy to equate yourself with your job, I think that this definition is far too narrow. Our days are filled with “doings” and our career is much more flexible than it has been traditionally. Most of us will have more than one job during our lifespan.
What we do represents the choices we make with the the finite amount of time given to us. Time is a great equalizer: whether we are young or old or rich or poor or whatever, we all have 24 hours in every day. In choosing this over that, we practice our priorities and our values. What a wonderful measure of who we are!
Even though some of us are afforded a lot of luxury (my washing machine cuts laundry time to a small fraction of my day, for example, and I don’t have to carry safe drinking water to my family’s home, for another) we all do have some control over our experience and those choices eloquently speak to our character.
Doing is present progressive, which is a grammatical term for “always unfolding”. We’re on a journey. Which, I suppose, is a somewhat spiritual term for we get to make mistakes, fine tune our experiences, and change over time.
You might think that this perspective would lead to hoarding. I mean, I may not be much of a party-goer these days, but who knows? Maybe I will be in the future. Therefore, shouldn’t I hang on to that fancy dress and shoes that I never wear?
It doesn’t work that way because doing is ongoing in the present tense, therefore we can’t look to a hypothetical future or a distant past. We have to see where the flow of the present takes us and the more stuff we own, the more tied down we are.
It isn’t just the physical weight of stuff that makes moving hard, but the weight of delayed decisions that keep us encumbered. We have to be free to be our present selves.
Now, let’s bring this philosophical yammering down to earth a bit. The reason I find this “we are what we do” mentality useful is because it illustrates that there is a natural cap on the number of activities that I can engage in.
Useful possessions become the stuff that helps me do the stuff that I am doing. My laptop computer is useful for my writing.
Clutter is, simply, those possessions that are tied to activities that I am not engaging in and won’t be engaging in in the near future. Furthermore, clutter is that stuff that is easy to replace (should I need to one day) or perishable and won’t wait around for me to take it up in the future (especially clothes and food).
I know what I can get to in a week’s time. I know what I want to get to during the year. Any stuff that I am hoarding beyond that is really just that. Hoarding. And, let’s face it. Out of all the things I do, writing, parenting, cooking, running, hiking, … hoarding is not the kind of “doing” I want to be.
So, better to cut the strings, give clutter to someone who can use it, and be free to wander this wonderful world.