Getting Rid of Nothingness

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Matthew 6:19-21

As I sit in my old house, waiting for the Salvation Army truck to come and pick up the remaining of our belongings, I cannot help but reminisce about the past.

The house is mostly empty, it doesn’t feel like a home anymore. I just took a walk through the empty bedrooms, the kitchen, the dining room, the family room and now I am sitting in the living room which is the only place that still has a little bit of furniture left.

Over the past ten months, I have gotten rid of most of the emotional treasures that we accumulated over the past 35 years. I call them “emotional” because I get emotionally attached to things. My collection of Lladró figurines was passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. I tried to pass them on to my daughter but the new generation is a whole lot more practical than we were. If it doesn’t fit inside their phone, they don’t want it. I’m trying to learn from them, with the help of Marie Kondo, to say good-bye to my treasures. However, I simply couldn’t part with all my Lladro’s. I kept the Virgin Mary that my grandmother had in her room, and three others simply because I liked them. I also gave the wedding couple that we got as a wedding gift 35 years ago to my son Rafi and his wife, Emily. When they got married eight months ago, I gave it to them and told them it was a heirloom. I figured we could start a tradition where they in turn can pass it on to their first child that gets married... That’s if they keep it that long.

It is difficult to let go of all these things because each one holds a special memory in my heart, but I keep reminding myself they are just things. Now I understand why the rich young man in the Bible grieved when Jesus asked him to sell all his possessions. “‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” Matthew 19:21-22. It is very difficult to get rid of our possessions because we become attached to them.

However, “no matter how good, beautiful, true, or exciting a thing or state of affairs is here below, it is destined to pass into nonbeing,” Bishop Robert Barron. “St. Augustine once said that since every creature is made ex nihilo, it carries with it the heritage of nonbeing. There is a kind of penumbra or shadow of nothingness that haunts every finite thing.” I remember once, my cleaning lady broke one of my Lladro’s. It disintegrated into a zillion little pieces. She felt worst than I did. I told her not to worry, that it was just a “thing.”

I keep reminding myself of that. They are just things, they don’t mean anything. I am getting rid of nothingness. At the end of the day, all these emotional treasures are just things. Yes, they may evoke a good memory, like the small ceramic figurines that we brought from a trip to Spain, but even if I get rid of those figurines, the memory will remain in my heart. Easier said than done. In the end, I kept not just the four Lladros, I also kept a lot of the souvenirs that I have acquired in our trips around the world. I kept most of our paintings, and I kept the small ceramic figures. I just could not part from all these possessions that bring me so many great memories. I guess I still have a lot of learning to do in order to fully detach from all this nothingness.

Seeing things with indifference “is meant to redirect our attention precisely to the treasures of heaven, to the eternity of God. Once we see everything in light of God, we can learn to love the things of this world without clinging to them and without expecting too much of them. Think of how much disappointment and heartache could be avoided if we only learned this truth,” Bishop Robert Barron.

As I walk through my empty old home, I realize how true those words are. What made this house a home was not the things it contained, it was us. Now that we are no longer here, it’s not home anymore. We will make new memories and we will make a new home because home is where your heart is. Everything else, it’s nothingness.