We Were Only Passing Through

It happened so quietly that I almost missed it.

One box left the apartment.

Then another.

A bag of clothes.

A shelf that no longer made sense.

Books I once thought I could never part with.

Little by little, the weight of my life began walking out the door.

At first, I called it decluttering.

Then simplifying.

Then preparing for a move.

But somewhere between the donations and the empty drawers, I realized something much larger was happening.

I wasn’t just letting go of things.

I was letting go of the illusion that they had ever belonged to me.

Every object I have ever loved has already lived another life.

Someone designed it.

Someone built it.

Someone placed it on a store shelf.

Someone carried it home believing it would stay forever.

Eventually, it found me.

Now, one by one, they are finding someone else.

Perhaps that is all ownership has ever been.

A temporary responsibility.

A quiet agreement between us and the things we hold.

We care for them.

We use them.

Sometimes we treasure them.

Sometimes we forget they are even there.

Then life reminds us that our hands were never meant to stay closed forever.

The strange thing is that the more I give away, the lighter I feel.

Not because I own less.

Because I carry less.

The space inside this apartment has become a mirror of the space inside my mind.

There is more room to breathe.

More room to imagine.

More room for whatever comes next.

One day, someone else will live here.

Someone else will drive my car.

Someone else may read the books I loved.

Even the photographs will eventually become stories told by people who never met me.

That thought doesn’t make me sad anymore.

It makes me grateful.

Maybe we were never meant to spend our lives collecting.

Maybe we were meant to spend them caring well for whatever passed through our hands.

Because in the end, nothing truly belongs to us.

Not the furniture.

Not the house.

Not even the years.

We are simply passing through this world, leaving each thing—and hopefully each person—a little better than we found them.

Perhaps we were never meant to own the world.

Perhaps we were only passing through.