The Horrors of Hoarding
One day I watched a reality show about people who had been diagnosed as hoarders. They fill their house and yard with everything they’ve ever owned, and eventually life becomes unlivable. In real life I have seen these people, and the smell of the place really fills in the overall picture.In one episode of the show, a grandfather, Lewis, had filled every room of his two-story house from floor to ceiling with his priceless “treasures”—from his children’s 30-year-old homework to leftovers from last month’s fast food dinner to the rats and roaches feasting on all of it.
The house was unfit in every way for human habitation, and the state had condemned the building years ago.
Living with Lewis was Lucas, his nine-year-old grandson, whose only place to sit, play, and sleep was a filthy, ancient recliner. The reality show attempted to help Lewis and the boy by bringing in several dumpsters three weeks before the date when Lewis would be evicted, the old home would be demolished, and Lucas would be taken into the foster care system.
The city couldn’t legally force Lewis to part with any particular object. They just made it clear what would happen if the house was not emptied sufficiently to create a home suitable for a young boy.
Regrettably, Lewis couldn’t part with anything, so the dumpsters were carted off empty, the house was condemned, and Lucas was remanded to foster care, despite agonizing tears from everyone involved.
What Parents are Hoarding Unconsciously
As I watched the reality show I realized that I had seen it hundreds of times before but in more subtle ways. We parents hoard pain, fear, emptiness, anger, victimhood, power, indulgence of our children, and more, all creating the illusion of temporary satisfaction, diminished pain, and every other counterfeit for happiness.
And we do this despite innumerable and unequivocal warnings about where we’re headed with our self-deceptions, just as Lewis was warned by the authorities.
If we hoard anything that fails to give us the genuine, consistently reproducible happiness that comes from feeling loved, our hoarding grows, and the price becomes unspeakably high, as in the case of the man who lost his house and grandson.
If we don’t even know what happiness IS, then anything else will do, even if it leads to emotional and spiritual death. If garbage is all we have, it can seem even precious. In short, we hoard those things that prevent us from finding the kind of life we really desire. Most succinctly, we hoard death—for ourselves and for our children.
With rare exceptions, we don’t hoard consciously. We just hoard whatever our minds and hands can get hold of. Hoarding is almost always quite unconscious, which is much worse, because whatever behavior we cannot recognize we cannot modify, as much as we may need to.
We must clean house now, making room for joy and for an ability to love and teach our children.
