Divestment

My good friend S.G. has been engaged in what he calls a divestment project over the last couple of months. The origins of the project are obscure – I gather that a friend of his gave him the idea – but the gist is that every day you get rid of one thing that you don’t need but are either too much of a pack rat to throw out or too lazy to figure out a way to donate. So you get rid of it in a “creative” way – leaving it on top of a gas pump while filling up your car, dropping it into the bed of a parked pickup truck, etc. You divest of one thing every day. After a while, you’re considerably less encumbered with stuff you don’t use. At least that’s the idea.

As much as I believe most of us own way too much useless junk, I’m not sure I really understand the appeal. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to just go through your closets, put together a couple of boxfuls of stuff, drive it to the local Goodwill and be done with it. But what I think is beside the point. Yesterday morning, I noticed a Vitamin Shoppe plastic bag sitting on top of a newspaper vending machine on a street corner outside my building. There was clearly something in the bag, for it was staying put despite the rather strong breeze. Wondering whether I should be wearing a pair of rubber gloves, I gingerly parted the folds of plastic and looked inside. I found a pair of worn-looking brown boat shoes. Did someone in my neighborhood divest of them the same way my friend was doing? Is this a cultural phenomenon now? Is there some underground message board on the internet dedicated to creative divestment of this sort? Probably. It’s just littering if you ask me, but then, there are many current cultural phenomena that I don’t get and probably never will.