I spent a fair part of my Sunday afternoon doing the very adult activity of cleaning out my email inbox. I did this because, much like a storage unit, I refuse to pay someone to hold things that ultimately I don’t want to face.  And I know that I’m not the only person who feels this way. I’ve got an Air Force friend who, after spending a few years abroad, returned to the U.S. and received an email from the company holding a bunch of her items in long-term storage. When they asked her when and where she wanted it delivered, she responded by saying, “Can’t you guys just keep it?”  And they did. The belongings were most likely auctioned off to someone and she benefited by never having to go through all of that stuff she had acquired as a junior officer.  

The in-the-long-term merciful thing with my email provider is that once you reach its free storage limit, you can no longer send anything at all. You’ve got to go in and have a delete party. So there I was, filtering my years of mails by file size to see what all of those dead weights were about. I got down to under 8GB and sort of feel as light as a feather. And the bonus is that, like the unclaimed storage unit, those things are gone into the ether and I won’t have to deal with them ever again. If only all of life were this way for us.

This past week I was in the south of Italy and had some extra time on my hands. I decided to visit one of Italy’s impressive archeological museums that date back to the Greeks and before. They’ve got rows of items that have been recovered, dated and shined up for magnificent display to a curious public. And of course, many of the treasures—to include pottery from millennia ago still with original paint—or jewelry, coins and molds that once cast daggers….all of it was just laying around in the earth. Waiting to be discovered (or not)…but most likely stumbled upon when some modern age builder was trying to construct something new.

While on that trip in Puglia, I’d arrived in the hotel and realized that I forgot my toothpaste. Lucky for me, the room contained one of those oblong cardboard combo packs that offer an emergency toothbrush and a small tube of no-brand toothpaste. I really didn’t want to open it because really, I don’t need another toothbrush lying around. If I had just been able to locate the toothpaste, I wouldn’t put all of this to waste. Alas, I am a forgetful human. And so nothing to be done but use that small toothpaste and justify matters by retaining the 1930s-era toothbrush. Maybe back at home when a post-pandemic guest comes to visit, they will ask if I have a spare toothbrush and I can redeem myself by producing this relic. 

With teeth brushed and now forgotten about, while walking around I saw a lot of things in that archeological museum. So much in fact that I cannot recall with certainty whether they showed any remnants of an old timey toothbrush….but I do suspect that they had a few.  We humans excel at using what we need and then bulldozing the discards over to be a future problem. Or exciting discover.

On Friday night back in Rome, I went on a nighttime tour of Trajan’s forum and beyond. It is iconic because the columns (most of which were erected upright again by Mussolini) look spectacular with the lights shining off of them. Our tour guide spoke of the history of the area, to include how it once looked and how it looks now (any visitor now will note that much of it is now bisected by Via dei Fori Imperiali—the street that runs between Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum. On each side as you walk by, you can look down and see hundreds of broken pillars, cornices and statuary. Ultimately too much to be reassembled and restored—or even lined up into yet another museum of the city.  

In the larger scheme of things, a skinny plastic toothbrush is not much to wonder about, given the vast supply of pieces from the past in Italy. Indeed, when it’s all said and done, I won’t be even be a single character reflected on Trajan’s Column in the years after I have crumbled away. But that stupid toothbrush will still be here. And it’s not even that pretty to look at. The tough thing about what we rely upon each day in the modern day, it is highly processed and difficult to break down (unlike to stone, metal and clay of times gone by). And even if I’m the best recycler in the world, deep down I know that it’s not enough to offset my presence. That’s why the email deleting activity felt especially satisfying.

Much like the fori of Rome or the many museums that contain so much stuff, it is easy to feel overwhelmed as one human who takes out probably more trash than they need to each week. And I’ve got no solace to offer on how we live our lives. As I type this, I am wearing fantastic spongy flip flops which I know will only have one life cycle. Of course I will try and minimize my footprint to the best of my ability- but at the end of the day, I know that 1000 years from now, there will be a museum donated to this current age. And inside there will probably be things like a Fiat 500 car. Or maybe an ageless Twinkie.  I can’t be sure. But what I can be certain of, is that elsewhere in many corners of the planet (probably in countries in need of money), the rest of crap will be covered over in perpetuity.