I am watching a video by a professional organizer. With new technologies, helping to tidy and organize is a profession. And I have no doubt that it is necessary. Whoever does not have a tidy kitchen cannot cook well. The desk where you study is your brain (and no, saying “Then, if it were empty, would my brain be empty?” doesn't count). I know that having a place for everything is necessary for peace of mind.
This professional, like all of them, a disciple of Marie Kondo, says the same thing as everyone else: to tidy up, for example, a closet, you have to take out everything that is in it and then classify. Clothes to give away or donate, clothes to throw away, clothes to repair, clothes to store. And they all insist a lot on the concept of “knowing how to let go.” They all tell you that the clothes you are not sure about letting go of should be placed on a table (the table of doubts) and at the end of the day you decide. They talk to you about visual pollution and the calm that having a refuge without things in the way brings. I see it very clearly. But here is the thing, this one, talking about letting go, got to the point. Books.
She talks about books by desacralizing them, which I think is fantastic, and says that we should throw them out if we haven't read them, if we aren't going to read them, if we couldn't finish them. She says it from a moral superiority that has hurt me, because books and writers have never asked for this sacralization. Quite the opposite. It happens that the same people who sacralize excessively, desacralize furiously. "Me, if I don't like a book, I put it down”, she says, so pleased. And I do too, but without making a fuss. Just like I leave a croquette if I don't like it. With the same sorrow and with the same determination. The sentence she said at the end is the one that revolted me. "You have to put down a fiction book if it's a waste of time. A book about «learning» is something else. I try harder with those”. With fiction series they never say it this way. Wasting time with the audiovisual system seems to them a right to be conquered.
