On the floor beside my desk is a box as dense as the sun. I'm cleaning out my room, getting ready to move, and the sun is sitting next to me. Should I save these memories, or let them go? What is meant to be saved? Is it some personal choice, or an approximate list we must follow? Are letters from old relationships, drawings and postcards weighted the same? Christmas wishes from friends and family? If we keep them, how often to do we revisit: once a month, a year, or only when we move? What started as a cardboard box is now the sun.
When someone writes to you, talks to you, or expresses themselves in some raw and real way, in that moment it is to be cherished with all the capacity one has. Attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give, and in those intimate moments we must devote them all. When it passes along with the essence of those relationships, do you retain their relics, bound to be buried under the current of everyday life? Ultimately they serve as a reminder, a flashbang of events now awashed many times over. I would rather be in a place to create a thousand more experiences raw and personal than have a tho usand memories of them. The aim should not be to collect memorabilia from relationships past but live in a way that manifests them. In that moment it was real and true, and that is enough to let them go. That is the vulnerability that we all fear and which we must accept, unknowingly or unwillingly, to forge lasting relationships. But ultimately, that is the vulnerability that makes life on this lonely rock worthwhile at all.