Joy.

DOCTOR: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

(He kisses Missy gently.) 

DOCTOR: I really didn't know. I wasn't sure. You lose sight sometimes. Thank you!

Death in Heaven, Doctor Who

Having finally found a new place to live, Karli and I are faced with the consequences:  boxing up all of our earthly possessions and either moving them ourselves or leaving them for the movers.

Packing is always an opportunity to purge, and if something has languished untouched and unneeded in storage for over a decade, the decision to sell it, donate it to a good cause, or trash it is an easy one to make.

However, some of those decisions are more of a challenge than others.  As per Marie Kondo, sometimes the question is whether or not the object sparks joy - or, more accurately, whether it still does so.

I haven't been consciously conducting this kind of analysis, but there have been things that I looked at and wondered if I only kept them out of habit, rather than any actual continued interest.  For example, I have a shoebox full of postcards from all over the world - my mother's relatives in England would send her postcards, and when they found out that the 8-year-old me kept them, they began sending them to me directly. 

Over the years, I've continued to collect post cards, asking people I knew socially or professionally to send me one when they travelled, and faithfully adding the ones I received to my little collection.  When I got to that point in the packing process, I took a long, long look at that shoebox. 

In the short term, I found a place for it, but it was a near thing.  Not all my possessions were so lucky - it was a little surprising, not to mention liberating, to see how many things failed the test.

The good news? My books spark joy.

It's more of a relief than you would think. As the 12th Doctor so aptly puts it, you lose sight sometimes. It's easy to take things for granted, but as I've started to pack up my little library of science fiction and fantasy, book after book has made me stop and smile appreciatively.

In many ways, my humble collection of dog-eared newsprint and worn 4-colour covers is my life.

It has been my inspiration, my teacher, my doorway into a more enlightened point of view, and, more times than I care to think, it's been my final refuge from the challenges and disappointments of the real world.

In fact, when I think about it, joy hardly seems to be a strong enough word.

- Sid