In reading the article “Is Pink Necessary?” by Annie Murphy Paul in the 23-January-2011 New York Times Book Review, I was struck by a question posed by the author: “Don’t our possessions reflect who we are…?”
If our possessions reflect who we are, I am an eclectic person. My “stuff” includes my grandparents’ photos as well as my grandchildrens’, with good art and junk side by side. A Gauguin sculpture sits next to a small wooden penguin picked up in Antarctica, the antique Russian box from my mother is next to the pretend glass of spilled wine on the coffee table—one of my favorite objects. So the fun and the serious, the irreverent and the religious fill my home and are indeed a reflection of who I am.
So I will stop complaining that I am a failed minimalist—I have not failed, for I have never really attempted it. I accept my clutter. Its meaning is now evident—I am a cluttered person full of everything in a wonderful jumble of adventures past and present and always ready to go where I haven’t yet been.
