This past weekend I put my paper shredder to good use. Over the years, due to my magpie-like tendency to hoard every little thing I deem to be even remotely important, I built up a sizable collection of boxes containing all kinds of paraphernalia. Letters, memos, books, papers, articles, gradesheets, photographs that had not been good enough to make it to my photo albums, and other knick-knacks that covered the last 13 years of my life (and a few incidents beyond) were all in there.
A task that should have taken a few hours extended for over a day and a half as I read every word, re-lived every episode, and revived long-forgotten memories from the deep recesses of my mind. Going through those boxes was like taking a ride in a time machine, albeit one that stopped and started randomly through my past. People I had not thought about in years showed up in old photographs. Names I could not place any more showed up in notes I had written to myself. Events that I had displaced from my heart came back to me. To paraphrase a famous dialogue from the Spider-Man movies - With great purging comes great remembrances.
It was quite a poignant weekend. I feel like I have met my past and am now ready for the rest of my life to begin. Ten years from now, when I have the inevitable urge to purge again, I hope to have as rich a store of memories as I did this time.
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