Schopenhauer on Self-Image

I intend to spend the bulk of the day packing as much as possible of my apartment for Saturday's move. I was unaware how much stuff I had accumulated over two years until now that I am laying it in front of me. I never liked my boss at the Census, but he often remarked - and was correct - that "moving is hard because 'stuff' just accumulates". All my 'stuff' is at this point more an asset than a liability. I wondered yesterday if my renter's insurance was still valid, if I could burn everything. I wouldn't even have to be compensated; I'd benefit in not having to move it.

Speaking with Anthony, who's renting out the room that I'm moving into, I told him that I didn't have much stuff, that I liked to minimize my life. Actually getting my stuff into boxes, that statement is going to require a revision. He's a foreigner (Ireland), and I worry he's going to think I'm a typical American, naive in what I consider a frugal lifestyle having claimed such. Moreover, will he be a hard-drinking Irishman who thinks I'm an effeminate dandy when I show up with my numerous boxes? I found comfort in Arthur Schopenhaur, who wrote that in regarding others' thoughts towards us:

...[W]e shall gradually become indifferent when we acquire an adequate knowledge of the superficial and futile nature of the thoughts in the heads of most people, of the narrowness of their views, of the paltriness of their sentiments, of the perversity of their opinions, and of the number of their errors. We shall also become indifferent to the opinions of others when from our own experience we learn with what disrespect one man occasionally speaks of another as soon as he no longer has to fear him or thinks that what he says will not come to the ears of the other man; but we shall become indifference especially after we have once heard how half a dozen blockheads speak with disdain about the greatest man. We shall then see that whoever attaches much value to the opinions of others pays them too much honour.

The solution is to repeat this countless times as I pull up the Budget Truck on Saturday, like a Zen mantra.