Keep the pearls, lose the rest
On July 1, I shifted toemeritus status at the university where I’ve been teaching for the past 12years. We’ve come to use “emeritus” as an honorary term where those who retirefrom a position are permitted to keep the last title they held. I’ll still haveoffice space on campus and may teach from time to time if the school would likeme to and I’m still capable of doing so.
While I will also continue to teach and consult elsewhere, Ihave set a goal for myself for the first several months of tending to arigorous purge of all of the boxes and files of materials that have accumulatedin my attic and basement at home during the past several decades of my worklife.
Along with boxes of books I’ve written and a lot of positivememorabilia accumulated are several folders of old correspondence, not all ofit pleasant. Some of my poorly written graduate school papers that I’ve keptfor some reason, perhaps hoping they would strengthen with time. (Theyhaven’t.) A pile of letters from various publishers letting me know howuninterested they were in a book proposal. A handful of letters from readersletting me know just how wrong I was in a column I had written with expressedwonderment about how I ever got asked to write a column in the first place. Anda couple of particularly tough letters from my father who was disappointedabout a decision I had made or my own disappointment I had expressed about adecision he had made.
Old notebooks, ephemera from a long-ago holiday, matchbookcovers from restaurants that must have meant something at the time (myfavorites are the ones that have pre-printed “name” and “phone number” insidethe cover nodding to the pre-cellphone method of collecting a stranger’s numberat some joint) will all be easy to part with.
But the several folders of disappointments give me some pause.Perhaps I have held onto them to remind myself of the bumps along the road tomore pleasant memories. Now, however, with this commitment to a great purge tolighten the things I carry, is it time to let these things go?
As with many philosophical questions I’ve faced over my adultlife, I turn for advice to my best friend of 55 years, who retired recentlyhimself after a long career writing for the Muppets.
“That’s what shredders are for,” he responded without hesitationafter I texted him asking advice about whether to keep any of this stuff,particularly the letters from my father. “Try to dwell on the bright moments ofthe past. Shred the letters, for it irritates you and will likely not result inpearl.”
I’ve also kept an old fax/answering machine that I haven’t usedin a decade because it had some voicemails on it from my grandkids when theywere toddlers. In finally transferring the voicemails to an online digital fileso I could recycle the machine, I came across a lovely voicemail from my father“just checking in.” It’s the only recording I have of the voice of my father, whodied in the first months of the pandemic in 2020. Keeping that message seemsthe right thing to do. It’s already a pearl.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
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