lately, even being at home feels not quite like the being at home. this pandemic did not strike like an earthquake – it did not shatter windows, or topple books from shelves, or leave cabinets disheveled and ajar. but still, the things around me seem different. a new consideration assigned to every one of my possessions – are you too unclean to touch, or too clean to touch?
every thing i reach for, put to use, adorn myself with, is attached to a calculation about whether i’ll have to wash it before, or wash it after, or wash myself before, or wash myself after. remember that time i got all interested in “minimalism” and convinced myself that one day i could have an apartment that looks like it belongs in kinfolk? those kinfolk homes seem clean enough to touch, with people clean enough to touch them. me? i’m still struggling to get my socks to end up in the hamper.
the word i always accidentally use when i try to say non-materialistic is immaterialistic. either way, you know what i mean when i say it. non-materialistic is a way of living in which i am not driven by the consumption of material objects – objects which may or may not include the ones i already have, which may or may not include the ones that fall in the spectrum of necessary and convenient.
when i began thinking critically about my consumption patterns, things i already owned were originally grandfathered into my world of aspiring non-materialism – they were in a safe zone that said, like, “from now on i won’t accumulate dozens and dozens of plastic action figures of animal mutants.” then came the kondo method. the kondo method is a notion put forth by marie kondo in the early 2010’s that convinced me and millions of others that true freedom from material objects entails talking to each of them like they are humans, and then only keeping the ones that filled you with a sense of inebriation. no longer did objects fall into the two dimensions of necessity or convenience – enter the third, quantum value of “sparking joy!”
what is necessary? what is convenient? what sparks joy? – these attributes have shifted in each object during this time, where so many things can be “a carrier.” when touch-screens and flip-switches that once could be activated with hardly a thought can now send me back to the faucet to use another 20 seconds of water, an extra helping of soap, another perpetually damp towel that must be washed more frequently.
this is why i can not completely be a non-materialist or an immaterialist (and by “not completely be” i guess that means “not be”). i dwell too much on the things around me, and that dwelling makes them too real to exist only in my mind. there is a fork, and that fork needs to be sanitized. should i abide by kondo’s mandate, what of all the things that don’t “spark joy” but rather evoke grief, concern, regret, and fear? without objects for me to hold these sensations in the safety of my own home, what chance do i have when i inevitably encounter them in the world outside?