Don't Hoard and Waste Away

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” writes Dante Alighieri in the book “The Inferno” of the epic poem “The Divine Comedy”. In the Fourth Circle, 7th Canto in the bowels of Hell, the guide, Virgil, introduces Dante to the Hoarders and Wasters. Their divine retribution is being bound to incredibly burdensome weights, constantly battling each other. I used to be a Hoarder. I would accumulate games, books, movies, clusterings of material belongings that I thought I would need later on down the line. Now, I was a sophisticated Hoarder, meaning I actually organized and categorized the “Hoard”. The scariest thing about Hoarding is you just maladaptively develop a process of saving and storing, so you aren’t even aware of this burdensome dump of garbage you’re developing.

But the key here is to not abandon all hope. Don’t vacillate to the other extreme, throw out everything, the baby with the bathwater, and become a waster. Never Hoard and never Waste, but sustain conviction in your own certainty. Keep the hope, ditch the hoard, and feel connected with your life!

A Journey Back to the Ancient Maya

The two western-most states in Mexico are Baja California and Baja California Sur. Swing east and the three states that make up the eastern peninsula are (west to east) Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo. Quintana Roo has Cozumel and all the incredible coastal dive spots including the Meso-American reef. Although all three of those eastern peninsula states host beautiful mayan sites, only the Yucata peninsular state is home to the capital city Merida, and sites such as Chitzen-Itza and Uxmaal.

This journey details my revisiting of Mexico and travel within the Yucatan and Quintana Roo states.

Money as a Tool

Money is a tool. Money gets people to do things that they wouldn't normally do. You can easily draw a graph of money versus outrageous tasks with money on the x-axis and on the y-axis, a quantified mangitude of outrageousness, out-of-the-way tasks. The graph would be very nearly linearly increasing slope similar to the graph of f(x)=x or y=x. In short, as the amount of money increases and is directly related with the range of prohibitted, impossible, outrageous tasks. In other words, if someone is paid more, their list of impossible or negated tasks becomes a shorter and shorter list.

Understanding the relationship between money and tasks is important so you don't get snared slaving for money master. Let money work for you. Use money as a device -- a mechanism. Just like you would a computer or a car. Or does your car and computer own you?

You don't own money. Money can own you.

You don't own a car; a car owns you.

You don't even own a computer.

You, if you're lucky, and wise, and healthy, own a body.

Don't be a slave to the tool of money. At best, have money working for you, through your own mechanism. Live your life like the Sufis; as if you died when you were alive and truly connect with your spirituality. This is the opposite of cult-like infatuation with death or after-life, this is just being fully living as comprehensively as possible.

The Four Categories of Organization

These categories of organization are outrageously simple to understand, but invaluable for lucid living.

When you organize yout life belongings, four distinct and immutable classifications of organization arise:

1. Utility
2. Memorable Worth
3. Financial Worth
4. Garbage

Whether you're sorting through old belongings, heirlooms, or possibly junk you never threw out, you simply need to make the decision as to if each belonging falls into either of the first three categories. If the item can be used, it has utility and should, therefore, be saved in close proximity to the site of usage. If the item has memorable worth, it should be classified as valuable memorabilia, and stored in a clustering of like items. For example, old letters have no financial worth and no utility, but can be ranked very highly in terms of their memorabilia, so they should be put into a container clustering all other saved letters. Clustering solves the all-too frequent problem of having scattered memorabilia. So you really only need to decide on those two categories, then the item defaults to being in categories Three or Four.

If the item doesn't fall into categories 1 and 2, but has financial value, obviously it should be put into the financial worth category and resold or philanthropically given away. If the item doesn't have financial or memorable worth and serves no direct purpose (utility), it automatically goes into the "Garbage"category and should be discarded. It's very simple, but very complete. Every item falls into one of those four categories of organization, and can be classified simply by deciding whether or not it serves a financial or memorable purpose.

Everything starts with a decision of action. People develop clutter in their lives by not going through this simple decion-making process. You can add years of clarity to your life be simply going through this process.