Things

Emotional attachment to things. Do we have them? Should we have them? Do I have them? If so, what things am I emotionally attached to? I can’t answer the first two but I can examine the second two. This subject crossed my mind recently as I’ve been selling a number of items.

I can’t say I have any kind of emotional attachment to the things I’ve owned. I’ve never named a car or anything else for that matter. I do have things I’ve liked a lot and things I’d like to have back. But emotional attachment? Not really.

One exception might be the 2004 Honda Civic SI I owned. I was working out of town when I had this car and it provided a kind of link to home. Maybe not home, maybe it was a friend experiencing the same things I did. Something we were going through together. That’s probably as emotional as I have ever been with a thing. This is one of those items I wish I hadn’t sold.

A couple of other cars that I wish I still had include a Honda S2000, Porsche Boxster S, BMW 330 and a Ford Probe GT. Again, great cars but no deep emotional attachment. The emotion came from the sound and performance of their engines, how they handled and how they were all greater than the sum of their parts.

Next, Apple Macs. For a bit I collected old Macs and my two favorites were the Mac Cube and the G4 iMac – the “sunflower” Mac. They both worked perfectly and I’d use them for various things. The best part though was their design. They were both beautiful industrial design objects. There may have been a bit of emotional attachment with both of these as I had “lusted” after them from the time they were introduced. For me, two of the high points in Apple products! Again, I wish I still had them.

Finally, telescopes. I’ve been an astronomy buff since I was a kid. I remember well watching the first steps on the moon live with most of the rest of the world.

What sealed the deal though was getting my first look though a “real” telescope, a Celestron 8, when I was in sixth grade. I was spending a week in the mountains at Outdoor Lab (something sixth graders did in Colorado) and we were able to look at Jupiter one night. I would still like to own an orange Celestron 8 like the one I looked through so many years ago. I never have though. I came close with a Celestron 9.25.

Anyway, like other things, I’ve owned a number of telescopes. As I grew in astronomy, so did the telescopes I owned. Life and other priorities came along and so the telescopes would come and go util I finally decided a few years ago that all I needed was a small, high quality, “grab and go” scope. I ended up with an Orion EON 80mm refractor that was a great little scope. I figured this was my “forever” scope and it has been for many years.

Well, one day I read about an Astro-Tech 115 refractor that everyone was raving about and I thought a little bigger scope would be nice. Folks compared it with a Takahashi FS102 (the only scope I’ve owned that I wish I had never sold). A beautiful scope to look at and look through. I also acquired a bigger mount to handle the scope (used).

I had no complaints about the scope and mount. They were both terrific! The problem was, they were big and took a bit to setup and use them. This was the whole point of why I had gone to a small grab and go scope.

Well, once I learned all this, again, I sold the EON and the 115 and mount and decided I just needed a little bigger and better grab and go scope. It’s on order so we will see if it becomes my “forever” scope. I hope it does. My plan is it will.

I saw many beautiful things through the telescopes I’ve owned but it turned out to be what I was looking at, more than the telescope, that I became emotionally attached to.

Maybe that’s it. It isn’t the things that create attachments, it is the journeys that they take us on that are the emotional part. The places we see, the people we meet, the experiences we have, the experiences we have together. The things just took us there, allowed us to see it or even allowed us to create it. Some of these things had great beauty, to be sure. But, it was the beauty they lead us to and the emotional impact of that journey that created all the special memories that these things have left us with.