When I started to declutter my place, I didn’t have too much trouble discarding items. I do love the feeling afterwards.

The only things that I couldn’t throw away are those that are associated with my “family” and “friends”: “I couldn’t throw away this plushy because it was given to me by my mum when I was 12, and not that book either, it’s from my dear friend from the States.”

But when I thought about it carefully, there is to be a funny gap between:

keeping these items because of its “value” (“because it’s from my mum!”)

and

the things that I do that give “value” to relate to these people

Why, instead of calling my mum every week, I would rather keep a plushy that she gave? (I don’t even hold that plushy a lot. It just rolls about on my bed.) If I really do not want to give out that book because it was a gift from a friend, does it really mean anything anymore if I don’t like the book, or/and am not very responsive in replying to her messages?

What is the true value of “value” if we can’t even use that valuable something to add value to our lives? Perhaps, it is just something else – unidentified – being mistaken as “value”.

And in that case, how many more things in life that we have attached these “unidentified something else” to, but mistaken or carelessly see them as the real meaning of “value”, eventually cluttering up our lives with “valuable items”?