Is it really better to "throw away"? Ways to let go that fulfill the heart

When you want a fresh start,
when you are moving,
when you want to become a minimalist,
when you have suffered a heartbreak,
when you feel a sense of stagnation.

Sometimes you decide to focus on throwing things away.
At such times, don't you often think like this?

"Time to declutter! I'm going to throw it all away! Let's just keep tossing things out!"
"This looks like it might sell, so I'll sell it on Mercari instead of throwing it away."

However, that might be an act of "thinking only about yourself." An incident before moving made me think so. And at the same time, my heart was filled.

The time goes back to before the move.

* * * * * * * *

Moving in two weeks.
When I imagine the new place,
things I decide to let go of appear.

If it looks like it will sell, I sell it on Mercari.
If it doesn't look like it will sell, I throw it away quickly.
I want to put large items out as oversized trash.
But since it costs money,
I decide to have the moving company take them.

That was my thought process until now.

However, my wife started using an app called "Jimoty." It seems she started using it after hearing from a friend who moved that they "sold or gave things away on Jimoty."

Jimoty is similar to Mercari.
You conduct direct transactions between individuals on the app.
This point is the same as Mercari.

What is different from Mercari is that you basically hand the items over to the other person. And, you can not only sell, but also give things away for 0 yen. (Mercari requires items to be 300 yen or more.)

By interacting with "local neighbors" who can come to where you live, what is an unnecessary item to you becomes something useful to someone else.

You can put a price on it, like 500 yen or 1,000 yen, but since I prioritized letting things go before moving, I listed them one after another for 0 yen.

When you list for 0 yen, messages requesting to pick them up arrive relatively quickly. If it's a popular item, you might get more than five messages within 30 minutes.

Sometimes the "reason for wanting to pick it up" is written there. Like "I was just thinking about buying a replacement" or "I want to use it at a facility."

Yesterday, the TV stand I had used for many years departed as "equipment to be used at a facility."

This morning, a toy that Santa Claus gave our children after they begged "Buy it for me!!" when they were in the lower grades of elementary school departed.

The children were at an age where they no longer played with "it," and it had been left alone for over three years. When I put it on Jimoty as "giving away for 0 yen," a message came immediately.

There are various reasons for wanting "it."
One message had a reason like this written in it.

"My daughter asked Santa for 'it' for Christmas, but I couldn't buy it for her."

My own Christmas memories overlapped with that. Thankfully, at that time, I was in a situation where I could buy it when my child said they wanted "it."

However, before that, there was a time when my savings hit rock bottom, I lost my job, and I was in a dark place. Back then, I was at rock bottom, and I was filled with a truly apologetic feeling toward my wife.

When I remember that time, I understood the feelings behind the message painfully well. "There are times when you want to do something for them, but you can't."

I decided to give "it" to that person, and early this morning, I met the person who came to pick it up in the parking lot.

A woman who appeared to be the mother got out of the car. Behind her, as she bowed deeply and said "Thank you so much," a girl in the lower grades of elementary school appeared.

When I handed "it" over, the child was smiling so, so happily. "Wow, yay! Wow!" It was clear that she really, really wanted "it."

By the way, the true identity of "it" is a vehicle that looks like a skateboard transformed into a figure-eight shape, something called a "J-Board" or "RipStik" that moves forward when you twist the front and back.

Even when I saw the car off, she was saying something happily to her mother inside the car. Watching that figure waving from inside the car as they drove away, I felt a warm, gentle sensation of "Wow... I'm really, really glad..."

If you throw it away, it will be disposed of as trash. Just because it is no longer necessary for you, it might be too early to treat it as "trash." By "giving it away" to someone, it turns into a "gift."

In the past, I suppose "hand-me-downs" circulated within large families or villages as children grew. There might be talk that people dislike "hand-me-downs," but a cycle was born there. That has been severed by the shift to nuclear families, and items become unnecessary and are thrown away in a single cycle.

If you do that, things will certainly sell. It might be a good thing for a capitalist economy, but we are reaching a time when we must graduate from that, and such omens are increasing.

Thinking about such things, what came to mind was Tetsuya Takeda explaining the book "The World is Made of Gifts" on the radio. It's quite interesting, so I hope you listen to it.

I feel like a cycle where the heart is fulfilled is born through "gifts."

See you later.