Chindōgu

Language is a wonderful thing - there are, I understand, studies which indicate that learning a different language can even change the way in which we think.  One of the great things about being open to other languages is that you sometimes come across a word in another language which has no direct equivalent in your own, and yet is perfect for describing a situation.

Schadenfreude is usually the obvious example - a German word for the dark joy we sometimes feel in the troubles of others - but there are others. My favourite is l'esprit de l'escalier, which is French for thinking of the right thing to say ten minutes after you needed to say it, but you might like gumusservi, the Turkish word for moonlight reflecting off water, or mencolek, the Indonesian word for tapping someone, from behind, on the opposite shoulder, in an attempt to fool them.  This week, I've been coming across almost endless chindōgu, which is a Japanese word for stuff that isn't exactly useless but which doesn't really have a use.

I'm back in the UK this week, sorting out my house.  All my stuff is going, broadly speaking, into one of three piles - stuff to ship to HK, stuff to store in the UK and stuff to get rid of. The stuff to store pile is basically the "I don't know what to do with this right now so let's put off making a decision because it's too hard pile" while the get rid of pile breaks down into two - stuff to give away and stuff to throw away.  What all of this entails is a huge amount of sorting and decision-making and the realisation that I have an awful lot of chindōgu.

A lot of it is stuff that I've kept because I thought it would be useful at some point - mostly training or reference materials, paperwork, etc. Problem is, I haven't looked at most of it for at least eight years, so it clearly wasn't all that useful.  (And excuse me while I attempt to quiet that voice in the back of my mind that, even now, is saying "But it might be useful. One day.")  A lot of it is stuff that I've kept because... well, I didn't want to throw it away and that's usually because it had some kind of emotional attachment at the time.  

Birthday cards, notes, small gifts, photographs, souvenirs, even items of clothing.  All untouched and unseen for years but all carrying (sometimes tiny, sometimes large) sentimental weight.  Basically, a series of emotional land-mines that I've spent this week accidentally tripping over.

Don't get me wrong: I'm very happy at the moment.  Moving to HK, despite the price that I've had to pay, was the right decision for me.  I regret aspects of how it happened and some of the consequences but I don't regret the basic decision to move.  But this week has been like a trip down memory lane to all those times when life was very different and could have gone a different way - if this person hadn't left, if that relationship worked out, if that job had panned out the way it should...  

Not all of the associations have been sad - I came across some things that made me cry from happiness to be reminded of them.  But it's been hard not to spend some time looking at some of this stuff and wondering what might have been, had different decisions been made, different paths taken.

Possessions possess, they say; I'm keeping some stuff but I have no doubt that it does me good to let a lot of it go.  For too long I've carried it around from home to home, never needing it, just holding on to it - perhaps metaphorically as well as physically holding on to the past.  It's chindōgu, stuff with no use, and it's time to let it go.

Now if I could just do the same with all that useless stuff in my head...