And so, when you discard - what do you discard?
The act of discarding has remained a mystery to me...
They say, discard what is useless. But then, what is useless! To define something which is no longer in use as useless, would mean getting rid of every such day marked as a yesterday. For, the yesterday no longer holds valid today and yet when you walk with firm steps to throw them away - that is, this accumulated pile of useless yesterdays - are you not also resolving to throw away that distant yesterday (among many others) when your faltering footsteps were replaced by the determinant steps which characterize your gait today...!
And then they say, discard what is meaningless. Even more perplexing. How do you know for sure what is meaningless? To think that meaningless is that which is without meaning is a simplistic definition to pacify presentist requirements. For what is meaningful this instant, is a futile exercise in meaninglessness the very next moment. Say for example, the exercise of breathing. The breath which left you a while ago or may be some eons ago, originated from you and was lost in the nothingness of all-engulfing time...but is it meaningless? Did it not leave you a bit more equipped to negotiate with the randomness of life...!
The pragmatic would argue in favour of discarding inanimate stuff which no longer serves a purpose. But then again, how to distinguish between purpose and purposelessness... Even the apparently meaningless, purposeless old colourful wrapper of a gift you have forgotten all about, is not redundant if you can see in it the folds marked by the careful excited fingers which were engaging in this exercise to create a few moments of memories with you, amidst the randomness and unpredictability of life as it stands to be... Just so with an old toy. It might be broken, tattered or distorted beyond recognition now, but how do you not recognize the thoughts that went into purchasing the same by people who felt it would bring a twinkle to the eyes of a child... Or may be just the crutch which stands redundant today...how to discard it as a purposeless object if you still can recollect how it supported your shaky existence when there was nothing else you could cling on to...
I sometimes feel that 'rags to riches' isn't just a phrase narrating the story of reversal of fortune...it is also the potential magic which every individual perspective is capable of...that latent presence of suppressed truth, which when endowed with recognition through memory, transforms the rags into riches..!
