Buried in the sand at the beach.

I look around my room.  I challenge myself to find something in here - anything - that would have been in my room had I first moved in a hundred years ago.  Is there anything here that would have withstood the tests of time - not only from a durability standpoint, but also because I would have kept taking it with me...?

Not my underwear, that's for sure.  The blanket, perhaps...will they recognize this table as a priceless relic in 2113?

I am not a fan of relics.  I like the nostalgia they trigger, but not enough that the sentimentality would take over and convince me to hang on to what is otherwise just a receptacle for dust and lost space.

I spent the last year looking for reasons to throw away (read: donate) as much of my material possessions that I could let go.  Each time I held something in my hand that I dug out of a shelf - or a box under the other box in the cabinet under the sink - I would ask myself:  "Do I really need this?"

One of the most important things in my life that I learned from travelling to the United States was that feeling.  Upon returning home, bags were opened for unpacking.  Clothes in arms, I walked to the closet to put them back where they were neatly stacked just a month prior.

Inside the closet were stacks of clothes that I did not bring with me.

Look at all these clothes I neither needed nor thought about.  Half of them almost immediately went into the vacant Balikbayan Box and were shipped off to some household helper's province.

A hundred years hence, my hope is that closets, rooms - peoples' very lives - contain only what they really need.  That what I really need becomes clearly visible right in front of me, unobscured by stacks of "things I might need."  Things I use.  People who matter.  Friends that "get it."

Where are these things?  Who are these people?

They are under that fancy car we might buy, or maybe behind that hot girl we want to get jiggy with.  More usually, buried under the stacks of paperwork on the desk.  The things that matter, we don't pick them up till we buy the car, fuck the girl, finish the work.

Treasure hunts.  Fun.