The fear of missing out...

Today i am having a clear out - recycle anything that can be recycled - give away anything that i don't immediately need in the next six months. All was going well until i came across some 'psychologies' magazines i was saving that i hadn't read yet or couldn't remember reading. Hmm - instead of recycling them and not worrying what i was missing out on, I downed sticks and starting reading - and i came across - three or more interesting articles that i found quite useful - things that i can apply to my life and work right now to move me on... and of course things that are relevant (because anything that catches my attention is relevant and will lead me into some new revelation under the surface... oh dear...what lies ahead). One article was about FIT, a psychological approach to breaking a habitual behaviour by breaking out of and changing small habits like eating the same meals every week, watching tv over dinner everynight, taking the same route to work, wearing the same style of clothes. Changing small things gradually attacks the wider web of habits that holds us back from changing the big things like stopping smoking/ overeating/ drinking etc. The next article was about Sylvia Plath and it simply reminded me of some books she'd written that are probably pretty relevant right now e.g. letters home - the letters she wrote to her mother telling her 'I am a writer, I am a genius of a writer, I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life. They will make my name.". I was going to write something else actually, in relation to this, (that i told my mother 'i am a footballer, i am a genius of a footballer and i want to goto brasil) but i remember something else - that i made a lino print of the words of the title to this book 'letters home' - it appealed to me so much. I was maybe 18 at the time and at university and missing home a little. And that reminds me... and leads me to a revelation...

Some years later, when she moved on from her house in england, my mother gave me all the letters that my father wrote to her when he left for Nigeria. I started reading the letters and they began to tell me about a life i can't remember, changed my memory of the past and a father i never really knew. A few days later, I stopped reading them - it was too much to take in - and then today, suddenly i am reminded of them, in tidying up and decluttering my house. If i keep going with this tidying thing, maybe i will come across them (they are here somewhere)... so the question i am asking today is what might i discover by embracing the fear of throwing everything away - what might i discover that i am really missing out on...?