Sometimes You Just Need A Fresh Start

03/20/2008

Such was the case of Ian Usher, a British man who recently went through a divorce. Tormented by memories of his former wife while living in the home they used to share, surrounded by the belongings they had accumulated over the course of their marriage, Usher found himself unable to cope with the profound changes in his life without finding a way to wipe the slate literally clean. And that he did – by putting his home and all its contents up for sale on the Internet.

At www.alife4sale.com, Usher is offering for auction his home, belongings, and even his job as he endeavors to build a new and exciting life for himself.

While Usher’s approach could be called, well, a little extreme, the motive behind it is not uncommon. Many of us find ourselves encumbered by the burden of belongings that no longer have any meaning in our lives – items that take up unnecessary space, or that remind us of times gone by, and not in a good way. Perhaps they’re items like Usher’s – relics of a past life that can be said, with finality, to be over. So why are so few of us reluctant to do just what Usher did and cast aside useless trinkets?

We need their value. Note that Usher didn’t just rid himself of the offending property; he sold it, converting painful past to hopeful future. Think of old engagement rings, or that prized brooch that belonged to a beloved relative who has since passed on. These things have a value more worthy than their melancholy emotional one.
We prize our anonymity. One obvious but perhaps unwelcome side effect of putting your life up for sale on the Internet: an overwhelming loss of personal privacy. Whether we don’t want to offend someone by selling a gift they once gave us (that necklace that just isn’t you) or don’t want to admit to so much as owning the property in question (“Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time!”), being able to sell without revealing our identities might encourage more of us to take the kinds of steps that Usher did. Though, maybe on a smaller scale.
We know they have meaning. Often, though, we’ve forgotten what that meaning ever was, and we save our belongings as a means of assuaging the guilt that sometimes comes with forgetting.

There is a lesson to be learned from Ian Usher, though maybe not the one that first comes to mind. Perhaps the lesson appurtenant to his story isn’t that you can ever really wipe your slate clean. Perhaps it’s that, given appropriate compensation, a measure of privacy and a way to give old items a new meaning, there is a graceful and life-affirming way to let our old belongings go. To exchange, for example, old jewelry and use the money to start a vacation fund. Suddenly, that mate-less earring and broken chain have become vivid new memories – and taken on a whole new value. Isn’t there something you’d like to just let go?

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