Advice For The Ages

Question: I was thinking about Leo the other day. How he’d have 50 supermodels on his yacht. Why does he need 50? ( technical answers welcome) His life exists at a much greater amplification than mine, but whatever it is, shoes, booze, money, status, stars wars action figures, how do we know when we have enough?”

Answer: For Pete’s (my) sake, why are you asking me that question?

I’ve spent most of the pandemic getting rid of stuff. It started when we got a gift of a car accessory that we had no conceivable need for, outside of a Mad Max apocalypse scenario, so I checked the price online and sold it on the internet for 90 per cent of retail in one day. I felt like Mr. Selfridge when he figured out a better way to sell gloves to society ladies. I was hooked.

Since then I’ve gone through our closets, cupboards and even the junk drawers that The Missus thinks I don’t know about and I rooted out sellable things that we rarely or never use.

I snuffled through it all like a pig after truffles, and turned a long list of things into cash, including tennis rackets, cross-country skis, a Kitchenaid stand mixer, a very quiet but very large and lonely food processor, a table radio, a broken-down turntable for parts, a Canon G10 camera, a Canon G11 camera, one pair of green-and-black Doc Marten’s brogues in size 12, three sets of fancy boxed books of history, several photography light stands, one fake front page from The Onion from the day after the moon landing with a 200-point headline that declares “Holy Shit!,” and one acoustic guitar.

I confess that last item got me a bit sentimental at the moment it walked out the door, as I used to take it to jams at my late friend’s garage, but becoming a resale magnate has no room for feelings.

Why did I get rid of all this stuff?

Maybe it’s pushback against the pandemic, that feeling of public-health-enforced claustrophobia, or maybe it’s that I’m aging at a rate that is approximately 2.6 times faster than it was when I was younger, and I feel a need to rid myself of surplus stuff and material things that distract from what’s important.

***

(Scene: At the Pearly Gates, sun rises gloriously over clouds, harp music plays Talking Heads’ “Heaven” in background. Peter approaches St. Peter.)

St. Peter: Hello, Peter. What brings you here?

Peter (me): I think I died?

St. Peter: Excellent! How did you die?

Peter (me): I feel like I died of confusion, as I sort of expected you to know these things before I got here.

St. Peter: Son, don’t presume Heaven is efficient. Dead bureaucrats have to go somewhere, and in Heaven everyone gets spend every moment doing what they love most.

Peter (me): Where’s the whiskey?

St. Peter: It’s on that cloud over there, the one that looks a little bit like Waylon Jennings.

Peter (me): Damn, I shouldn’t have sold that guitar.

St. Peter: No, son, having sold all those unneeded items is the only reason you’re here now. Until then, you were in the “maybe” column.

Peter (me): What about all the other good things I’ve done?

St. Peter: You’re here. I’d not ask too many questions or the bureaucrats might reopen your file. That’s what purgatory is, by the way.

***

As you can see from this realistic and deeply moving scenario, getting rid of stuff can pay off in big ways. So my advice is that you stop thinking about getting more stuff, and start thinking about whether you need, or even want, the stuff you already have.

The fact that you’re already asking yourself, and us, the question should show you that you have more stuff than you actually want. You haven’t admitted it to yourself because you’ve been programmed by the consumer-consumption complex to believe it’s wrong to not want more. It’s not wrong to not want more. Less stuff can equal more happy.

Besides, who needs 50 supermodels lying all over your suede furniture? It’d be like having a herd of skittish, high-maintenance thoroughbreds in your house. Even one supermodel would be too demanding, what with sourcing enough of whatever type of lettuce bean is in vogue this week to provide the 400 calories per day she needs to survive.

Don’t envy Leo, pity him. You think he’s happy, but he’s only acting.