Stuff always points us beyond the here and now. Not just religious objects, but personal belongings too. My stuff is never just stuff. All of it is sentimental. Photos correspond to friends who might tragically and abruptly drop dead. Notebooks to past knowledge. Mail to a future call from the IRS. Knickknacks to places I’ve been. Books to my wish that I’d be a smarter, better person. Clothes to either a more innocent or glamorous version of myself. And most of it gestures toward my parents, who always buy too much for Christmas, even when my brother and I tell them they don’t have to, because despite all the ways I fail as a daughter, they love me more than I can bear to imagine. And stuff is how they show it. Their love has never been conditioned on anything. It’s difficult to believe mine is unconditional when I decide they’ve given me too much.

Influencers would have us declutter our lives. Maybe they have our relationship with our possessions all wrong.