I once heard someone say, very confidently, “I hate stuff.”
Everyone around them nodded, relieved, as if that settled something important.
I didn’t agree.
I said, “I love things,” and people laughed.
I love things because they aren’t just the object that happens to be in my hand or in my house. They’re the person who made them, the creative choices they made, the materials they used, the skills they practiced, the time they lived in and the people who ultimately kept those objects safe over time.
I have a small bronze clock on my desk. It’s been gutted, retrofitted with modern parts, and it still doesn’t work properly. I can almost picture the previous owner — someone stubborn enough to fix it badly rather than throw it away. Someone who smoked cigars. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. I keep it on my desk because it’s singular and beautiful, even though it only tells the right time once a day.
I own a Kutani pot I bought years ago with a chip the size of my thumb on the prettiest side. I spent months repairing it. The repair worked. You’d never know it was damaged. Once it was repaired, it stopped being mine. I’d never sell it — but it ceased to be something I owned and became something I was responsible for. If my house were on fire, that pot would come with me out the door.
There’s a 1940s woodblock print of three tulips that I immediately love for no reason and have never listed for sale. A small red lacquered pot that holds my pens and scissors, but that I move carefully — gravity alone keeps the staves in place. And a painting I once planned to sell until I found myself in Paris asking locals where the square in the painting was, only to realize I was standing inside it. I wish everyone the experience of being one pizza, three glasses of red wine, and a light rain in, and discovering you’re already inside your own painting.
People say they hate stuff when nothing they’ve owned has ever asked anything of them. Or when they’ve never learned how to ask anything of it.
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