Mind Your Surroundings
Aesop said, "A man is known by the company he keeps." You can also tell a lot about somebody by the stuff she chooses to surround herself with.
True story: Once upon a time, I worked a job where I occasionally had to pack up college students’ belongings, for various reasons. Sometimes students leave the residence hall suddenly and without warning, and someone needs to buy boxes and tape and methodically place that student’s life into cardboard. I was that person, on more than one occasion.
One time I packed up a student who had left very suddenly. She had gone without taking anything with her, so her recent college life was all there, crammed into her side of the room. I learned a lot about her as I packed.
She was an art student, and a good one - the painting she had been working on was a portrait in an almost-Van Gogh style, with little colorful flicks of paint.
The girl loved books, but didn't appear to read a lot. Her little bookcase was crammed full of books that showed no wear or creases in the bindings.
She was clearly a gigantic fan of music. She had records and a record player, cassettes and a walkman, CDs and a CD player, an iPod or two - music was clearly important to her.
Two cameras shoved in drawers with lots of memory cards led me to think that she took a lot of photos, but there were zero printed photos of herself or anyone else in her room. I wondered what she looked like, what she and her friends spent their time doing, what she found funny or beautiful. I wondered how she remembered her family and friends from back home, what made her smile at night when she was homesick, the things that she cared about other than music and art and books.
That day I came home, and took stock of the things I'd been surrounding myself with, consciously and unconsciously. I noted the stuff that was once important to me that was maybe not so important anymore, that was just taking up space and could maybe make someone else happier if they had it. I noted the stuff that would make me happier if I didn't have it anymore. And I noted all the photos. All of our photos bring back warm feelings and happy memories of those we love, and I'm happy to surround myself with them on a daily basis. (And when I’m bored of them, I have a large supply to pull from in order to update the walls.)
It's important to take stock of your life and surroundings every once in a while, to make sure that the things you choose to surround yourself with make you happy, not stressed out or tired or sad. (This is not to say that you should surround yourself with *things* that will bring you happiness, because I'm a firm believer that *things* will not make you happy, and you don't need to fill your house with things in order to meet some sort of goal. Only that there are bound to be things and stuff around you, even if it's one or two things, and you should make sure that those things still make you happy the way they once did.)
Clutter is a big stresser, so purge where you should purge. But if someone had to pack your life into boxes, would they know who and what you hold dear? Would they know that your relationships mean the world to you? Would they know what you look like?
If you’re looking for inspiration on how to incorporate your own photos into your surroundings, here’s a blog with a link that might help you. Click here.