What if I got rid of every thing?

I started reading this article on things, on doorknobs, on spoons, on dust, why stop there, everything can be objectified, become a fetish, we are drowning in a world of things.

Even if I had not given away all my things, I would still have a vague idea that they keep accumulating: As fast as one gives them out they seem to come back, one needs to continuously clean after them, like a layer of dust they keep entering one’s house, one’s room, one’s very personal space, even one’s pores, one’s very own body. If I don’t watch out, I have tiny beads rubbing the dirt off my skin, only to leave the house like a sick person’s discharge, to spread in rivers and oceans.

Giving away every thing without buying any thing new seems to be no solution. It keeps coming. I feel like an island that wants to be without ocean.

But what if I really made it, if I really got rid of all those things, if I really got rid of the ocean?

Don’t I like some of my things?

Don’t I like the window that I can shut, the book that I can read, the machine that does my laundry, the pen that keeps me writing?

Don’t some of those things make me a different, a better person? The book that questions my thinking? The machine that gives me time to study or to paint? The window, that teaches me how to clean thoroughly, that lets me watch and observe the birds in my garden, that reminds me that I should go outside because light and shadow are not the same inside my room?

Life seems to have become not only a matter of things within life but also a matter of life within things. Some things are my friends. They are my advisers. They are part of my thinking. A part of me seems to live within those things.

I can detach as I have done many times before. But I value their opinion. I would surely be a different person. But do I want to be that person? Detached and sleek, gliding through complexity, island without ocean? What kind of island would that be?