Don’t worry, I am not going to kill myself. This is just a post about my weird behaviour. Hopefully it is not that boring.
I am a guy who like to eliminate things. I don’t keep a lot of things.
I used to be like my mum, who will hold on to everything. For example, I used to keep all my primary scholl textbooks, PMR and SPM reference books many many years. I used to keep all of my old cloths, all my exam papers, all exercise books, etc. I refused to thow any away or give to anyone. I felt like ‘They are mine’. I always thought that ‘Someday’ I will need them.
My mum even better. She keeps lots of old shoes and cloths that she no longer wear. She doesn’t allow me to throw away my faulty 14″ CRT monitor that I used with my 486. She keeps a lot of new bowls, forks and kitchenware in the cupboard for years and only use the 2nd grade one because she wants to keep the ‘new’ one for use later. The later is always become never. And the new always become old.
My grandmother (my mother’s mother) even better, she keeps chicken cages until today although she has not been raring chickens for decades. My mother is definitely her daughter.
I once want to throw away a table that I have disembled long time ago but lost all the screws. So it cannot be assembled back. She, on her own, carried all the table boards from upstairs to her car when I was not at home and fetched all of them to my grandmother house. She did that again with my old 486 computer table.
My behaviour, used to be exactly like my mother and my grandmother. I even used to keep a lot of my childhood toys!
…
Last few years, I begin to change. Instead of hanging to things, I have learned to let go. I feel guilty that I have not given my PMR and SPM books to someone because I never touched them at all after all these years. I were hanging on these books because I feel like they are my properties. I thought that ‘one day’ I might need to read them again. But when I realized I no longer need them anymore, it was too late as the books were obsolete and the only meaningful thing to do is to sell them to old newspaper collector.
I bought a lot of original books in Universities because I realize if I have a new book that smell good, I am more willing to study it then a photocopied 2-page-shink-to-1-page book. I donated all of them to my library 1 year after I left my University.
Realizing that I had a lot of old cloths that were in mint condition but I never wore anymore, I packed and donated all of them in the last 2 years. I also had a lot of shoes and in the recent Chinese New Year, I donated 8 pairs of shoes that I were keeping for years but never wore! One pair of the shoes is a RM200+ Dr. Cardin. It is the most expensive shoes that I ever bought when I were Form 5. I am guilty that I only wore it a few times. I bought it because I used to have the mindset, “I need to follow others people style and fashion”. I got a pair of jeans that I have donated as well because again, I bought it because someone say it is the fashion but I didn’t like it at all. I just wore it a few times.
Now, I only have 3 pairs of shoes and 2 pairs of Jeans.
I have given my favorite remote control car to my newphew after keeping it untouched for more than 10 years!
I also have the tendency to keep things very neatly. My room doesn’t look ‘pretty’ but it is extremely neat. If you rate a guy’s room, mine will be in top 1% in terms of tidyness. I can always find something easily because I simply don’t keep a lot of things.
All my important documents are kept nicely in a few files.
All my books are keep nicely in a few book shelves.
All my cloths are keep semi-nicely in my cupboard. (I don’t have much cloths)
Even my computer! I have all my filed arranged very nicely and I will delete everything that is not important. I delete emails after I read them too. My important data, is less than 2GB and I can migrate them back and forth from my laptop in 2 minutes.
Why suddenly I like to elimate things and keep things nicely?
The reason, is weird.
If I die tomorrow, my parents don’t need to be bothered with all my stuffs. I don’t want to leave a mess after I die. I want to give them the minimum troubles. Almost all my stuffs are in my room. I have
1. A few shelves of books
2. Cloths in the cupboard
3. My computer
4. Files that contain important documents arranged nicely (my will, insurance policy, financial info, etc).
So, if I die tomorrow, they can just donate my books and cloths. Keep my computer for their own use, and open my files to get all my important documents. They don’t need to waste a lot of time looking for things, figuring where I put my stuffs, and going through a lorry of stuffs and documents one by one just to know what they are.
At 27, AhYap has prepared to die.