Cleaning House
In 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 was tragically brought down over Lockerbie, Scotland with 259 souls having their lives cut short by a terrorist bomb. That was a routine daily London to New York flight taken by many of us and used by my bank to transport the daily pouch with “important” interoffice communiques. On that particular day, we not only had our pouch on board, but also one of the officers in my division at the time. We were all very saddened by the tragedy and mourned the loss of our friend and colleague. Then, six months later we received a package from the authorities conducting the investigation, the NTSB. Inside the package were an array of plastic Ziploc bags with various bits and pieces of documents. These documents had been scattered into the winds in Lockerbie by the explosion and crash and then dutifully gathered up, inspected and sealed for return to us. These were the uber-important documents of six months ago that couldn’t wait for regular mail and were given priority transmittal treatment in the pouch. Each one looked like they had been through the war with dirt and grim on them. They were only somewhat legible, but as best we could tell, none of them was necessary for our ongoing business. This is the importance in the long run of things that we perceive as urgent in the short run.
I always am reminded of this story when it’s time to clean house either in my office or in my home. It so happens that both are necessary now. While I will be here for most of January, living in our apartment and working from my current office, our apartment lease runs out in February (the moving truck comes on February 3rd) and we plan to pass off our offices to our sublet tenant on February 1. My wife is giving things away to an old doorman who particularly likes getting my XXXL sized clothing for his church brethren. That required me to go through my clothes, some of which I had already assigned for transmittal to California. My basic rule of thumb is that if I can’t remember when I last wore something, it’s probably not necessary and can be given away. Pretty standard logic, but always easier said than done. I dutifully filled up a box and I will bet with high odds that I never notice not having any of the items I chose to send off for church-goer use. I like the thought that things I do not use will be pleasingly useful to others.
Simplifying one’s life is truly a good thing. Lightening our load by shedding unneeded stuff is always a net gain to our existence. The things that I have the most in excess are expensive bespoke custom suits that have my name in the inside breast pocket and Allen Edmond shoes. Those shoes are quite valuable, but I simply don’t wear them much anymore so I should go back and throw some of those on the pile. The suits are also in excess supply. I have a dozen grey and a dozen blue where I probably need no more than three or four of each. I will have to revisit that closet again tonight. These items are expensive enough that they give me pause to toss them so easily, but I really do have to lighten my wardrobe and nowhere needs it more than my business armor.
I also started with the cleansing exercise at the office this morning. I have three stacks of papers that have accumulated for the past two years. I looked through them and found that they could almost all be tossed out, so I did just that. I looked in my files and realized that with the exception of two personnel files, everything else I have in digital form so there is no reason whatsoever to save the hardcopy. In fact, this is one of the great realities of modern life that almost everything we need can be and should be digitized. I understand that some people prefer the feel of a book or a newspaper in their hand rather than a tablet, but when it comes to documents and emails there is little sense for anyone to operate outside the realm of the digitized world. It certainly makes business much easier and this connects directly with my story of a few days ago about the movement to virtual reality and the trend towards working remotely. This is an inexorable trend and any attempt to push back against it is literally spitting into the wind. Anyone who takes a moment to consider the reality of modern life will conclude that sitting at a desk and working with paper is simply no longer productive. It has far passed the point of no return.
So now that I’ve cleansed my office and my home of excess paper and excess clothing what else is there for me to do? I’ve already begun my digital catalogue of artwork and curios/antiquities. After an initial burst of energy, I found the digital clumsiness of the Excel spreadsheet vehicle to be too big of a constraint. I will need to look for another piece of software to handle the catalogue, but the photographing of the items continues unhindered. I have about thirty pieces of business mementos on my desk and my office shelves. I will try to give away most and toss the rest. There are only a few pieces of memorabilia from my work days that give me any kind of positive memory, and even those are not exactly treasures to me. We keep them in our office as forms of personalization, not really to remind us of all the good times we had in the office.
Why does family and friend memorabilia mean so much when work memorabilia means so little? I’m betting that I am not alone in this observation. Is it that work itself is a meaningless chore that is undertaken just to earn a living? I don’t think it’s that at all. I know how important work is to my well-being so I know I have a great deal of respect for its value in the overall value system of life. I will posit that work’s value is in the doing, not necessarily in the remembering. By contrast, family and friend time is valued in the cumulative memory of the times spent together rather than any tangible benefit accrued from that time together. Family is less about the doing and more about the remembering. That is an odd juxtapositioning, but it somehow makes sense to me.
It goes hand in hand with the notion that on our deathbeds we rarely say we wish we had spent more time working and yet we always say that we wish we had more time with one another. I do not use this to denigrate work, but simply to recognize that in the hierarchy of human needs, work fulfills a very necessary piece of the value chain, but it’s not one that has memorialization value. I think it must be like exercise. The value is in the doing it, not in the savoring, remembering and retelling of it. So, when I clean house for my move west, I will save the mementos from the house and discard the mementos from the office. I am proud of the work I have done over the past forty-five years, but I am most proud of the life I have built around me while I worked. Pride fades and love endures.
