The following is reprinted with permission from Rick Rose Essays

Taking Stock of Privilege

There is a moment when abundance stops feeling normal and starts feeling like something worth examining. I have three toilets in a home I live in alone. I have two heated garage parking spots and one car. I have a dishwasher, an air fryer, a microwave, three electric blankets for my European feather bed and favorite chairs – one of which is a 240-hand massage chair, something most people will never sit in in a lifetime.​

I have 1,800 square feet of living space, three storage closets stuffed full of things I mostly see on holidays – if I even remember to pull them out. I have two walk-in closets and a foyer closet. On a cold morning, my biggest decision is which hoodie in which color, with or without pockets. And on a hot evening, which length of short and what feel of fabric do I choose.​

And yet everything that actually matters to me fits in two shoeboxes.​

Letters. Notes. Photographs. Small trinkets from people I love and people who have loved me.​

No brand name. No price tag. Nothing you could shop for. Just proof that I was known by someone, and that I knew them back. That is the inventory that never lies.​

And somewhere between those two shoeboxes chosen from the hundred pairs of shoes I have collected is the question I think about more and more – what is the quiet weight of having too much? It’s time I let that thought lead my ways.