When to sell a sloop

There’s an aspect to materialism that has to do with possession for its own sake, as if the goods we own are a measure of who we are. But there’s another aspect that has to do with attachment to objects themselves long after they have ceased to serve their original purpose in our lives. I know a couple who can barely abide each other, yet they find it impossible to separate because neither can bear the thought of leaving the Victorian house in which they dwell. They aren’t married to each other, they’re married to double-hung windows and oak doorjambs and the varnished banister on the stairs.

“Be with what is so that what is to be may become” wrote Sören Kierkegaard. I’m familiar with the quotation because a psychotherapist friend scribbled it out for me on a prescription pad, as if I could take it to the drugstore and get it filled. It was sound advice, but before I could “be with what is, “ I had to give up what was and could be no more – and that, as my friend well knew, is a painful undertaking for which there is no known palliative