Confliction: Stuff

I am pacing. Unable to focus. Unable to sit still. I am pacing.

This is a sure sign of my conflictions.

I am conflicted about...

My owning and being owned by stuff.

The worst stuff in this respect may be stuff you don't use much
because it's too good. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff. For
example, the "good china" so many households have, and whose defining
quality is not so much that it's fun to use, but that one must be
especially careful not to break it.

To further complicate my confliction is the fact that I cannot seem to find a way to get rid of this stuff. I recently inherited the 'good family china'. Boxes and boxes of fragile and expensive plates, bowls and unidentified serving things. Oh, and did I mention the 'good family silver'?

Initially I thought I could make it 'live' so we unpacked it all. Gently washed and stacked it all. Counted pieces and even went so far as to photograph them. And we polished silver. The entire family polished until our fingers were blackened and the piles of flatware gleamed. We even set a table, once, to see just how it felt to use such finery. Then slowly the pieces went back into their respective boxes. As I type the flatware sits, nicely sorted, in its own plastic 'silverware' drawer insert on a table at my elbow covered unceremoniously with an old hand towel.

In an attempt to resolve this owner/owned situation I prompted one of my daughters to explore the possibility of posting select pieces on E-Bay. Her diligence paid off. She came to realize the value of the select pieces. And the cost of posting them. And the likelihood of actually selling them. And the real market value of the pieces. And, most importantly, that the likely 'buyers' of such pieces didn't really want them for their 'possession' value but for their potential resale value. It turns out that when it comes to 'stuff' people don't really want it, they want the value it represents - and the opportunity to sell it to someone else who unknowingly will be owned by their new stuff.

Folks let me tell you that some of this stuff is really very good, expensive stuff.

So, I don't know what to do. I have given some consideration to just giving the stuff away. Yet this resolution is not without issues. I believe that the recipient of such gifted stuff must value it. Must have some sense of what they are receiving and should be able to 'value' the gifted pieces as they are and not for their immediate resale value.

Another scenario is simply to destroy the pieces. In a sense releasing their value such that they can no longer own anyone. While altruistic I push back from this resolve. Something deep down inside is repelled by the thought of destroying valuable works of art and craftsmanship. I liken this feeling to the repulsion I feel about burning books. I cannot bring myself to consider destroying 'bad' books. (I won't go into 'bad' in this post but sufficed to say there are books that don't warrant reading the first time let alone a second.)

So ironically that which my father worked so hard at preserving for his heirs turns out to be the same burden that he paid so dearly for through the last half of his life. Looking back I can now see that he paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars to be owned by his inheritance. Prior to this newly found awareness I just assumed that he was 'old school' upholding values that he got from his parents. It never occurred to me that I might have been just as lost as I am now.

My real concern now is that I figure out a way to not burden my children with the legacy of my father's inheritance.