Giving away

Does giving away your possessions entail giving away yourself?

I often think of all the things, call them possessions or stuff, which have made up my life: where will all those things go, who will take care of them, why were they all so important to me? The answers are easy and painful: they’ll dissolve themselves, nobody will take care of them, they weren’t important, since I wasn’t importtant either … They are just memories of the past. The Italian poet Vincenzo Cardarelli, in this short poem on “memories”, says it well:

“Past”

Our memories, these exceedingly long shadows
of our brief body,
this tail of death
that we leave behind as we live,
the dreadful and lasting memories,
here they appear already:
melancholic and mute
ghosts agitated by a funereal wind.
And by now you are nothing more than a memory.
Your are well past and gone in my memory.
Yes, now I can say that
you belong to me
and something between us had happened
irrevocably.
All ended, taken away!
Precipitous and gentle
our time caught up with us.
Made of fleeting moments, it has woven
a circled and sad story.
We ought to have known that love
burns life and gives time flying wings.

Things, stuff, possessions, just like persons and people, disappear on “flying wings” … It’s not a question of being pessimistic, I call this reality, friends! …