Why couldn’t my friend let go of a piece of furniture?

What could you live without? This question has preoccupied me for a while now, due to two separate events, one real and one in the realm of fiction.

The first happened months ago to a friend. He came home to find his house inundated with sewage. There had been a burst pipe further along in the system and sewage had backed up and enter his house through the two showers.

There was literally shit everywhere. Needless to say, all the floors and some furniture were damaged and needed ripping out and disposing of due to their being a potential health hazard. No-one wants the threat of dysentery hanging around, let alone an insurance company facing a strange claim.

The second moment of revelation came with reading a dystopian novel by Yoko Ogawa. Set on an island in Japan in some indeterminate future, objects begin to disappear, eventually to never be remembered to have existed. Memory Police round up anyone who has been able to remember the disappeared objects, and they too are never seen again.

A new life

My friend with the sewage flood endured months of living in a small serviced room while his house was repaired. He would make the occasional foray back to his house, hunting for something that he thought he needed.

The semi-monastic cell living gave him time to think about what he needed on a day-to-day basis and eventually led him to a more minimalist life. He has thrown out and disposed of many clothes, he refuses to hoard books anymore, he has pared back the objects in his spaces, determined to live in a less cluttered environment.

Of all the furniture affected by the flood that he demanded to keep, was an old antique desk, a precious item gifted to him. It reminds him of his career and a connection to special people.

I understood his desire to keep that piece of furniture. Sometimes the objects in our lives signify something beyond their utilitarian purpose. They may connect us with a departed loved one, remind us of our children or help us to remember a happy event or time in our lives.

I have a small stuffed, ugly baby crocodile, a gift from my mother-in-law who sadly died young, never to see her grandchildren. It sits incongruously on my sideboard, out of place aesthetically, but it has a place in my heart.

What could you live without?

But back to the realm of fiction. The book had me confront what objects I could not live without. The first things to disappear in the novel were a ribbon, a bell, stamps and perfume. Yes, all things that could fall by the wayside in my world, hardly vital. However, as the novel progressed, even books disappeared and with them all of human thought over the centuries.

I railed at the idea of a world without books! I would be metaphorically sunk, drowned, denied my life force if you like. But then I thought about the other things I needed such as real coffee, decent bread of the crusty wholemeal sourdough kind, vegemite and butter and potatoes and pasta and beans and peas. The list appeared to be growing as I thought about it and I then realised that most of these things weren’t the important things in my life at all.  

Most of the things I initially thought about were the material things in life, the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, mainly to do with food and shelter. They were needed to keep me alive but not necessarily thriving.

My deep needs, like most people, focus on friendship and family, the need to be held, to be loved, to be seen and heard as a human being, worthy of compassion, empathy and understanding. Those are the intangible things I need.

What would be the basics you require to live? Why not share your opinion in the comments section below?

Also read: Why I’m grateful to be a baby boomer