The importance of being unimportant

If you really want to know how important you are in the world we live in please read on.  If not just stop reading and always wonder.  Simplicity...complication....material excess....minimalism, can all be measured in one fairly common but unnoticed means.  Keys!  It’s all in the number of keys you have in your purse or pocket.  When you were a little kid in school who was the most interesting person at the school?  No doubt about it...the Janitor.  He had that wad of keys hanging off his belt.  Every time someone had a crisis at school he was the Lone Ranger coming to the rescue by unlocking something.  Security guards, your dad, how about your mom rummaging through that abyss of a bag to find whatever key was necessary to get the job done.   

Granted things have changed on the technology side but the theme is still the same.  The more keys you have the more important and complicated you are.  There is also a flip side to that but “wait for it”.  So by definition, the fewer keys you have... the more simple and less complicated your life is, right?  Well, again yes and no.  

In my recent exodus from the complicated world, I have come to believe completely that the number of keys one has should be regulated by divine powers.  A couple of days ago I moved into a posh mother in laws digs here in Terlingua.  A real top shelf residence with running water and electricity.  Hot water may be an issue but I have a burner so problem solved.  For the  bulk of my last few years I have been besieged  with keys.  Keys for the ridiculous crap that I buy, rent, already own, etc...  The wad of keys in my pocket had gotten to a point where it was not going to go into my pocket....safely...men you know what I mean.   The most crazy fact about this problem is that I do key management all the time it seems...for personal safety mainly.  I get that wild hair and cull through this pile of keys and try to figure out what they are for.  Eventually, I have two or three that I have no idea what they go to.  None.  I labor in frustrated agony trying to get them off of the nail breaker contraptions they are on and then put them in a box.  Yes.... I don’t know what they are for and I keep them.  The fear of one day going to some obscure locked box deep in storage that potentially contains some long lost treasure and not having the key forces me to hedge my bets and keep the stupid keys.  Storage, trailer locks, door keys, box keys, truck cover keys, closet keys, fire safe keys,  vespa keys and the locks that are around it, over and over.  At one time or another they have been in my pocket and on my “ring”.   Sorry, back to the exodus.  Moving away from the metropolis of Canton and all the keys associated with ownership, I did formal key management last night.  The result was my “ring” was down to two keys.  Yep, two.  Can you imagine how it felt both physically, guys you know what I mean, and emotionally to be that simple or maybe in this case “unimportant”.  The last time I had two keys in my pocket I was wearing snug fitting Levi’s and owned nothing. Maybe that is the practical joke of life.... When you own nothing you can have two keys and wear good fitting jeans and when you have a ton of shit you have to wear baggies because all those keys won’t fit.  Just a thought.  

Ok, the promised flip side.  Have you ever seen that person who gets out of the luxury car at Starbucks with only one key?  BEEP, and that’s it.  Do not be fooled by that overt display of counterfeit simplicity.  It is not true.  While that person may have simplified on the outside, they no doubt have several draws located in the “writing” alcove filled with keys to doors, boxes, ignitions, devices, and secrets.  They are impostors.  If that’s you stop.  Go get a huge key ring and join the rest of us in our wretched excess.  

What do you really need and enjoy?  Think about it.  Downsizing is like a prostate exam but the result is like find out your internet company has not been charging you for a year by mistake.  Simply marvelous and worth the short term pain.  I’m still not completely there and yes there are keys in the drawer but fewer than there was and going down.  

Viva Terlingua