Sorting through ones life
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I've just finished a particularly satisfying activity. I have quite a large DVD collection, which I started gathering in my mid 20's, and when my mother was visiting I asked her to pick a film for the night. The process of watching her choose made me realise that there were many films in that collection which I didn't particularly want to watch again, or even thought would add much to my life on repeated viewing.
So I decided to sort everything into three piles, a keep pile, a throw pile and a maybe pile. It was fun, a walk down memory lane, it took me a couple of hours to go through and then the maybe's a second time, thinking, what would it add to my life if I watched you again. In the end the throw pile is a bit over half, and includes a lot of sci-fi, a few westerns, disaster movies, almost all of the more more violent films, and a lot of the stuff that seemed to be just distracting time wasters (thanks @jayantha for the inspiration).
I've put everything I'm going to get rid of on the family whatsapp chat, seeing if there are any interested takers. I can't really sell them as many were bought in England and I'm living in the Netherlands and they lack subtitles. What's left I'll probably sort into two sets, one for keeping in the cellar and one for throwing.
My cupboard looks a lot neater and I feel better for it... It has lightened my load. Don't know how, but it did.
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Feng Shui - Clear the Clutter, clear your mind!
It does seem to work like that, doesn't it... I hadn't realised the feng shui connection. My mother is awesome at it, she runs a really tight ship. Unfortunately it's a skill I haven't quite mastered yet, I seem to do these things in bursts after it accumulates, in typical male fashion
I particularly love Marie Kondo's way of going through items. It makes so much sense and fits in so well with Buddhism. She is a Japanese woman who has developed her own system for clearing things out of your life. Amazing.
Is there anywhere you can donate the DVDs, or is there a local FB swap and sell type of group you can sell, trade or give them away? I always try to find a taker before adding more plastic to the landfill. I have yet to go through DVDs. It took a long time to get through books, but it is so nice having a much smaller collection of the books I love rather than piles of them all over. I will resume my project when the kids are back in school and DVDs are next on the list. We have so many. The crazy thing is, we might not watch a DVD for 5 years, but as soon as the movie is on tv, we watch, lol. We are going to switch over to having digital copies of the things we love/watch the most and get rid of DVDs and game discs.
Yeah, I have switched to keeping or buying only films I know I will enjoy several times. I had a lot of stuff like District 9 or Die Hard, which you really tend to watch only once. Things I am keeping are the likes of The Big Lebowski and Spirited Away.
I've also started renting a few films on iTunes. It's cheaper and earlier than a dvd, and if you watch something only once that's a good deal. For the rest I intend to limit collecting to just films I love to watch and are life positive.
Your local library would love to have your dvd's. It's very satisfying to look for a movie at my library and run across ones that I donated and know others are getting use out of them.
@silver good point! I always think of them for books but rarely for dvds. Thanks for the suggestion!
@Kerome For sure. We evaluate much more closely what we choose to buy on dvd. We pick up a few so the youngest can watch some dvds in the car on really long rides. But we are renting online much more.
Imagine how big a mountain it would be if we still had everything we ever owned. It goes to show we can't keep everything that we want all the time. It has to go where it needs to go.
In a way collecting is consumption and attachment... It's not particularly good for the planet, and it could be argued it's not particularly Buddhist. But there are lots of areas where I "tread lightly upon the earth", and films is one of the few areas where I allow myself some leeway.
But just looking for good, life positive films makes you realise how much adrenaline- and threat-driven rubbish Hollywood produces. It's quite difficult to find a gem amongst all the promotion, the best you can do is watch the film festival prizes, like Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Sundance.
I did find this list which was pretty good.
I have some old opinions I could let you have.
To add to that, most of us can do better at being more discretionary at what we continue to buy to add to that mountain that eventually goes into the trash. If you have never been to your area landfill, I highly recommend everyone go. Most city folks are so removed because their trash is picked up, that they have no idea the scope. it is disgustingly incredible the amount of trash human beings dump on a daily basis. Our landfill is in use for a population of maybe 4000 people, and we have to haul our own trash. Every time we go (weekly), I am shocked at the amount of stuff we manage to throw away on a daily basis, and then we just continue to buy more to replace it, perpetuating the cycle. It's quite disgusting. Go once, and look at the amount of trash at a landfill that is being dropped off on a daily basis. It'll change your perspective so much of all the stuff we think we have to own and what it is doing to our planet.
Yeah, give 'em over - I can store them in my sock drawer.....
It's funny, but this has given me a new perspective on movies and tv. I used to have certain stock subjects that I'd be drawn towards, like sci-fi or superhero or catastrophe movies. After the big sort-out I am finding that I am starting to use the same criteria, around "is it beneficial?" to look at these kind of movies.
I'm finding that where I used to be drawn to "what-if" scenario's, with an underlying thought of "it'll be entertaining and if I ever end up in that situation I'll know what to do", I now end up seeing things differently. The first part of the underlying thought was basically a waste of time, and the second is an illusion. The kind of threats superheroes face are not part of our world, and neither are most catastrophes, learning about them is not useful.
So if you're going to spend some time being entertained - wasting time - you might as well pick a subject that doesn't introduce further illusions, and is uplifting, and perhaps carries a useful message. Those movies or shows are pretty darn rare, I found one by Werner Herzog called Lo and Behold about the future of the Internet which was intriguing, but that was about it.
The odd thing is, I still find myself attracted to the idea of renting Batman vs Superman or X-men: Days of Future Past. There seems to be something there that I have not yet understood about how I am attracted to these things. It may just be conditioning, which would be sad.