STEVE CORREA
The cupboard door opens with a small wooden groan, and a faint smell rises—paper, dust, old cloth, something metallic from forgot ten keys, something sweet from envelopes yellowed at the edg es. Inside, nothing is dramatic. A few files. Old diaries. Cassette tapes in cracked plastic boxes. Movie CDs whose titles have begun to fade. Visiting cards of people I once meant to call again. Bills I no longer need. Receipts for things long bro ken, repaired, broken again and gone. To anyone else, it is clut ter. To me, it is evidence. Not evidence in any legal sense, though I often pretend that is why I keep these things. I tell myself there may be an important document, a forgot ten warranty, a useful refer ence from my consulting years. But beneath usefulness, these objects carry a more secret burden. They testify that I was here. That I earned, paid, trav elled, loved, hesitated, bought, saved, worried, hoped. Those days passed through and did not vanish without a trace.
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A cassette tape is not a cas sette tape. It is a room where I was young. It is a song playing in half-light, a body still unbur dened by age, a longing I did not yet know how to name. A movie CD is not an obsolete disc. It is children small enough to gath er around a screen, the smell of dinner from the kitchen, laughter arriving easily, with out permission. It is an evening before life became schedules, departures, airports, marriages, ageing parents, medical reports, passwords, nominations, wills. The mind is strange. It knows the past does not live inside plastic and paper. Yet the hand trembles when asked to throw them away. Recently, my wife and I looked at old photographs and felt the same unease. We were not merely deciding what to keep and what to give away. We were standing before ver sions of ourselves that no longer exist.
There we were—thinner, darker-haired, awkward in the way younger people are awk ward, full of a confidence we did not know was temporary. There were the children, faces open and unguarded, still belonging to us in the daily way children do before they become their own continents. How does one declutter a photograph? How does one say: this memory may go, this one must stay? I have often thought declut tering should be simple. Keep what is needed. Give away what can serve someone else. Dis card what is useless. Put the papers in order. Make life easier for those who will come after. Do not leave behind drawers of confusion, cables for extinct machines, files without labels, bank papers mixed with med ical prescriptions, and keys without locks. It sounds clean when said like that. But life is not clean. Life leaves residue. Perhaps what I call clutter is not disorder alone. It is the sed iment of having lived too long with uncertainty. Somewhere in me, there is still a man who does not fully trust abundance. A man who believes money saved is money earned. A man who switches off the air-condi tioner after two hours, not only because electricity costs money, but because comfort feels like something to be rationed. A man who reuses envelopes, re pairs what can be repaired, de lays purchases, saves the capital and spends only the interest. These habits once had dignity. They protected us.
They taught discipline, restraint, and en durance. They helped families survive lean years, uncertain salaries, and obligations that arrived without warning. I re spect that inheritance. But I also see how prudence can slowly harden into fear. There comes a time when the fortress re mains standing, though the war is over. The children are grown. The house is stable. The bank balance is no longer fragile. The old dangers have passed, or at least changed shape. Yet inside, the guard refuses to sleep. He still patrols the walls. He still whispers: not yet, not yet, not yet. Do not spend too much. Do not give away too much. Do not let go too soon. You may need it. Something may happen. Keep it. And so I keep. I keep books I may never read. Books on philosophy, history, poetry, leadership, and psychol ogy. Books bought in moments of aspiration, when I imagined a future self, sitting by a window, pencil in hand, making notes in the margin. Some have followed me from home to home like faithful animals. Their spines are faded. Their pages smell of dust and promise.
To give them away feels like betraying not only the book, but the person I once intended to become. This is perhaps the tender est clutter of all—the clutter of unlived selves. The scholar I might have been. The musician I did not become. The writer still gathering courage. The disci plined man with neat files. The generous man who gives with out anxiety. The free man who travels light. In every drawer, one of them waits. Sometimes, when I hold an old object, I feel a small ache in my chest. It is not exactly sadness. It is tenderness mixed with embar rassment. How much of myself have I hidden in things? How quietly I have asked objects to do the work of memory, conti nuity, identity. How often I have mistaken possession for preser vation. And yet I do not want to be come cruel with my own past. There is violence in throwing everything away in the name of efficiency. Some things de serve to stay because they hold genuine warmth—a handwrit ten note, a photograph where everyone is laughing, a book that changed my thinking, a shawl that still carries the faint presence of someone loved. To keep such things is not bond age. It is reverence. The difficulty is discernment.
What is memory, and what is fear? What is love, and what is accumulation? What is respon sibility, and what is postpone ment? What is inheritance, and what is burden? I think of my children opening these cupboards one day. Perhaps they will smile at some things. Perhaps they will be moved by a letter, a photograph, a note in my handwriting. But I also know they may stand bewil dered before heaps of paper, objects without stories, doc uments without order. What I preserved as meaning may ar rive to them as administration. That thought pierces me. What I call legacy may become labour. What I call memory may be come dust in their hands. Perhaps this is why declutter ing has begun to feel spiritual to me. It is not about a tidy home. It is about loosening the fist be fore forcing the hand open. It is about blessing what has served and allowing it to continue its journey elsewhere. It is about admitting that I cannot carry every version of myself into the next room. Maybe the house is not asking to be emptied. May be it is asking to be listened to.
Each shelf says: choose. Each drawer says: remember, but do not imprison. Each old file says: finish what you can while you still have agency. Each unused object says, “I was part of your journey, but I am not your soul.” One day, I will not be here to ex plain any of it. Before that day, I hope I can touch each thing once, remember what it carried, and ask gently: must you still remain with me? Some will stay. Many must go. And perhaps, with each small release, some inner room will open. Not emp ty. Light. (Steve Correa is a Leader ship Coach and OD Consult ant, who has had over three decades of corporate experi ence. He is author of, The In dian Boss at Work: Thinking Global Acting Indian.)
