Old wallets

I’ve had the same wallet since right around my 15th birthday, when I first got my permit and needed to actually start carrying things in my pocket. It’s a brown, leather bi-fold, and I have no intent on trading it out anytime soon.

I remember buying this wallet at the mall – remember those? – at an American Eagle store, because that’s where I thought I could get things to make me look cool.

Little did I know I’d be buying a pouch that would sit in my pocket through all of high school, four years of college, a marriage to the love of my life, graduate school, the birth of two kids, and through multiple jobs.

I couldn’t have known at age 15 that this little wallet would travel with me to dozens of US cities, to the beaches of Antigua, through historical sites in London, down the Romantic Road of southern Germany, from the east coast to west coast of Italy, through the streets of Paris, and to the most beautiful place on earth – Hallstatt, Austria.

I’m 33 now, and my little wallet has taken a beating. The leather is tearing in several spots. The plastic sleeve that holds my ID has cracked. It’s hard to tell if this wallet of mine has been loved or badly abused, but I can assure you it’s the former.

I’ve always been a sentimental guy, holding on to too many useless trinkets in the name of nostalgia.

I’m slowly learning two things.

First, you can’t take it with you. When you die, it’s just you – no overhead or personal items allowed. Everything else stays. And the only really important things that stay are the impressions you left on the people with whom you’ve shared your life.

And second, even though you can’t take it with you when you go, it is fun to carry something long enough that it becomes something of a piece of you.

So don’t get sappy about your stuff. It doesn’t matter enough.

But don’t take for granted the little things you carry along this journey of life. Most of your stuff won’t go the distance with you, and the items that do are worth holding tight.