“When you recall those moments, you should have spoken about the balcony itself, right? Its rails, paint, the chairs, the floor? How is it you tell me about the conversations?” I asked her. “Isn’t that the memory,” she protested. That is what I am telling you: the comforting memory is the conversation, not the balcony of the now 50-year-old house.
Many of us fall into this trap. We strongly associate objects with experiences and memories. Then we cannot separate the two. It is as if the memory depends on the object. The memory is dear, but the object is even dearer. The object offers the support, the trigger, the cause that helps us jog back and retrieve the memory. Without the object, we fear that the memory would be lost. We think that we need something to see, touch and feel, so we awaken memories in our brains that we can’t see, touch or feel. Do we really need it? What is truly the source of joy? Thus we become hoarders, putting aside little and big objects that seem to define many dear moments of our life. We can recall everything associated with that object, and tell the stories untiringly, with every detail repeated uncannily without being missed. There is no written script. However, the memory that remains etched in our memory somehow needs one physical manifestation that matters to us. Should it?
The memories of my mother are associated with the fragrance of the Mysore Sandal soap, her favourite fragrance. I inhaled it every time she fondly embraced me. My daughter gifted me a box of soap a few years ago, when I mentioned this to her, but I have not been able to use it. The sorrow of her passing away too soon hits me hard when I inhale the fragrance. That box of soap I will pass on to someone else, I think. The fact that objects will soon become mere objects is the reality. They don’t have the power of memories to stay on and be passed around.
To not be attached to objects is liberating. Objects bring with them many limiting qualities that can impact our well-being and, yes, wealth. They are all subject to deterioration. Holding on because we have attached some sentiment and emotion to it is detrimental to our health and wealth.
My friend spends money, time and energy to maintain a house she has not lived in for the past 25 years since her husband passed. “The ritual of cleaning up and living there is like a pilgrimage,” she tells me. I tell her she should be living there if it mattered so much to her. “I can’t,” she says. Then she should not keep it. Physical assets in our portfolios suffer from our inability and unwillingness to let them go.I know of several investors who have jewellery passed on through generations. These are precious, but none of the subsequent generations ever wore them. I don’t know if heirs are donating them to a museum or archives where such objects are curated and documented as part of the history and tradition of that age. These valuable pieces of heirloom are simply going to lie in the bank locker until some young inheritor decides to abandon these and not bother about them anymore.My anguish is that the value locked up in these physical assets is overlooked for the disproportionate attachment one exhibits for the object. There are too many houses left locked and uncared for; too many precious objects lying in bank lockers, and too many objects hoarded and left behind for the next generation to deal with. This is not a happy situation.
When the person is gone, that story breaks down. With time, the object returns to being merely an object, but it has lost substantial value by then for anyone to care. I have written about this before, but I shall repeat it anyway. Parents who leave behind residential properties for their children are burdening them with a chunky asset that is tough to sell or use. It is a drag on the inheritor’s time, money and energy. Look around to see how modern constructions have redefined living, and consider how a 25-year-old flat will compare.
Redevelopment, scream some, and I hear them. That is absolutely proof that the property is useless in its present form. There is a market that upgrades and helps one kick the can to the next generation that will inherit it 25 years later. Unless you live in it, or your heirs live in it, a residential property will remain a millstone around your heir’s neck even if you deny it. Since houses are seen as perpetually valuable and, therefore, never sold by many, they are held until deterioration or redevelopment, but that story is so weak as we narrate it.
Enjoy all those objects that have been part of your life—your house, land, garden, clothes, books, jewels, boxes full of memorabilia, and every other knickknack that lived with you over the years. But be aware that with your passing, they revert to being mere things. They will be tossed away, given off, left to rust and rot, or grudgingly cleared and sold, if at all. Make it a mission to end this life and leave as clean as you can. Give away and redeploy in your lifetime. Embrace the joys of liquidity over hoarded assets; minimalism and the present moment, over nostalgia. Use it or you lose it, they say, for the limbs. That must apply to wealth too. Even if hoarded in an object. Or one too many.
The author IS CHAIRPERSON, CENTRE FOR INVESTMENT EDUCATION AND LEARNING