Trivial objects have power to be containers for strong emotions

By David McElroy · May 13, 2018

The tiny music box has no monetary value. It probably cost a couple of dollars when it was new. It’s just a novelty, really, not a real music box. You turn the hand crank and it plays “Happy Birthday.” That’s it.

But as I experienced another birthday today, nothing made me happier — if only briefly — than this little piece of cheap metal and plastic.

Why? It has nothing to do with the device itself. There are a million similar things out there which I wouldn’t even notice. So why this one?

It was a birthday gift from a woman who used to love me. It was part of a box of whimsical delights that she spent an afternoon carefully selecting for me in the past. I still have the box and the music-maker and a few other things.

I keep them because such tiny objects have the power to hold onto love — and playing that silly little box allowed me to feel loved by her again. Just for a minute.

I guess anybody can understand the sentimental value of objects, but to me it goes beyond that. In a way that sounds a little mystical, it’s as though an object that has been touched by one person — especially as a gift — somehow becomes charged with the emotions behind that gift.

Have you ever received a message from someone in the mail — a card or a letter, perhaps — that could have more easily been sent by email? If the only intent is to communicate information, there’s nothing quite so efficient as email or a text message. So why is it special to get a physical letter or card?

When someone chooses and then touches a physical object — such as a card or a piece of paper on which a message is written — it becomes something special. It’s no longer just the information. It seems to contain a kind of magic. It seems to come with the emotional and spiritual essence of the sender.

This is why gifts are so important.

A great gift isn’t a generic item that the recipient would happen to like to own. There’s a place for such gifts and there’s nothing really wrong with them. But a great gift is one that has thought and touch and emotion in it. That sort of gift isn’t something to throw away or to sell. It’s something to treasure, because a little piece of the sender’s heart came with it.

If I were to die and someone else had the task of going through my things and deciding what to do with them, there’s no question that such a person would throw this little music box into the trash. I have a lot of things like that — things which have no value to anyone except me, because those things are physical containers for a feeling from the past.

That’s the real value of the things that we keep. Yes, some objects have simple utility and we all need those. But there’s an entirely different group of things. They’re the things which mean nothing to anyone except the giver and the receiver.

Those gifts are charged with powerful meaning to those two people, but they’re useless to anyone else.

Love is a powerful emotion. So are many other human emotions. In a way that I can’t explain or understand, gifts can hold onto those emotions. They can allow us to replay emotions from the past. They can allow us to feel loved once again.

That experience isn’t as good as the real thing, but there are times when holding onto the belief we’ve been loved is all we have. And there are even moments when that’s enough.

Share on Social Networks

A new Gallup poll says that 43 percent of Americans favor some form of socialism. If you factor in the people who also favor various forms of existing socialism but aren’t intellectually honest enough to call it that, those who understand economics and morality should know to be terrified by this. But the real terror isn’t that 43 percent of people embrace this destructive economic theft. No, the real problem is that we are stuck with a political system which forces everybody to be dragged along by the same populist insanity whether we want it or not. I have no objection to millions of people living together in socialism. I have a serious moral and practical objection when they insist they have the right to force me to go along with them. The problem isn’t public opinion. The problem is that the political system makes public opinion into a dictatorship.

Here’s my grass-cutting neighbor attacking my yard this afternoon. No, I won’t tell you which house is his, because I’m afraid you’ll steal him to do your yard instead. I really appreciate Harvey. My yard was looking pretty ratty. Another neighbor, Cora, called me on the phone while he was cutting and said, “Did you know someone is cutting your grass?!” I told her not to say anything because he might come to his senses and quit working if she did.

I got an email this week from an Australian psychologist who wanted to let me know that the therapists at the clinic she runs have been using an article I published six months ago — “If you grow accustomed to abuse, you eventually accept it as normal” — as required reading for their patients. (The clinic specializes in abuse by partners and parents.) She asked if I would let them print it for internal use by their clients, too, because she said some clients had found it was a good way to start opening up to the idea that maybe their experiences with a spouse or parent had been abusive and they hadn’t accepted that for a long time. I was really happy to find something I wrote being helpful for hurting people.

Do you remember me telling you about a couple who moved in two doors down from me just a month or so ago — and I saw them out making family pictures with children and grandchildren in their yard on Easter? I finally met them tonight while Lucy and I were out walking. They’re super nice folks, but here’s the reason I’m mentioning this. The man asked if I would mind if he cut my grass. I thought at first that he was just trying to make some money, but he didn’t want anything. He said he just enjoyed cutting grass on his riding lawn mower, so it would be a little bit of extra riding. I told him he was crazy — and they both laughed — but he’s going to start cutting it this weekend. I really do live around nice folks who treat their neighbors well. It makes me feel fortunate to know these people.

This is a day when I’d like to walk away from work for six months or a year and go make a film instead. Not necessarily as a way to get wealthy or as something to do for the rest of my life, but just to take a defined chunk of time and make something I could finish quickly. It was December 2004 when I shot my only existing short film (“We’re the Government — and You’re Not”) and it played in 20 film festivals over the next couple of years. It even won some audience favorite awards. It was a big deal to me. That short represented where I was then, but it’s nothing like what I’d make today. The YouTube version has more than 300,000 views, but the Vimeo version is better quality. As I thought about all this tonight, I pulled out scripts I’ve worked on since then and was surprised to find they were surprisingly good. I don’t really think much now about making a living this way, but I’d still like to make some art. Taking the time off to do it now is not financially feasible, but if it were even remotely possible, I would walk away today without a second thought.

Related Posts