I wish I were more of a minimalist, but I have a knack for keeping things “just in case.” It always amazes and to some extent shocks me how much stuff I manage to hoard in the time I spend in a community — books, newspaper cuttings, medicine boxes to trim into index-card-size, all types of paper for my art projects, tote bags, small plastic containers to mix my paints in . . . . The latest fad is flash drives, hard drives, memory cards and other means of digitally saving things, and believe me, I save multiple copies on different drives. “Once bitten, twice shy,” says the adage. And I remember that day when I plugged in my 1TB external hard disc to realise it was dead. And having a dead external hard disc in my hand was definitely not a pleasant experience. I had to mentally go through files and folders trying to remember what I had saved on it and how I can retrieve the information. The initial shock and denial over, I was angry at myself for not keeping another hard drive as a back-up. And then telling myself, “A few years ago I did not know what an external hard drive was,” “if I didn’t have one, I wouldn’t have to go through such grief.” Yes, I was depressed. I tried in vain to recover the information but to no avail. That’s when I gradually started accepting the fact that my hard drive was dead and I had to “bury” it. Most probably Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss psychiatrist, would have been proud of me for passing through the proper stages of grief — just to have the cycle start again . . . .
Bro Carmel Duca MC
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