IMG_2319I’ve been tossing out lots of old papers for the past couple of days. I have about a dozen boxes in my storage shed full of old papers from college, seminary, grad school, and 25 years at the counseling center, along with lots of miscellaneous stuff.

The box I chose to start on contains mostly class notes, syllabi, and papers I wrote while in seminary.

I am telling myself this is about “downsizing,” but it is more than that. This is also an acknowledgment of some uncomfortable realities. For example, no one, and I mean no one is going to be interested in these things after I am gone! No one is going to fund a room in a university library, put my name on the door, and ask for my papers so future generations can learn from me. No one is going to call and say, “Dr. Powell, you presented a workshop back in ’94 that was really meaningful to me. Would you send me your notes?” No one is going to write a book that would require them to quote from any of my graduate school papers. None of that will happen. I know that in my head, but my heart says, “Yeah, but…”

But my rationale for keeping these things gets even pettier. I want those papers so that others can see how hard I worked. There are hundreds of pagers of hand-written class notes, hundreds of pages typed on Judy’s electric Smith-Corona. This petty reason is embarrassing to admit, because no one cares about those papers or the work that went into them. And frankly, I didn’t work any harder than most others in my situation.

If I don’t go through these papers now, if I don’t look at them, appreciate them for what they meant at the time, and then toss them, my kids will find these boxes after my death, take a quick glance at the file folder headings, and say, “We need a bigger recycling container.”

But there is more to this than mere downsizing and letting go of some ego. All of this excess stuff is an encumbrance. Even though I have not looked at these papers in years, I know they are there. I know they need to be dealt with. I know they await my action. These things exert an almost undetectable weight on my psyche and my spirit. Almost undetectable, but a weight nonetheless.

Some papers I am keeping, the ones that contain some small piece of history that still brings me joy. Everything else is going. Knowing what to hold onto and what to let go is a lesson I continue to learn all the time. Paperwork is one of the less painful ways of addressing the matter.