# Identity Filters

By [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2) · 2025-05-30

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You know how sometimes you look around your home or office and you see things that you haven’t touched or used for years?

Not just see, but _see._

Most of the time, these items are just a part of the background, a part of the scenery. You don’t really even notice them.

But sometimes you notice them and you may be transported to another time or place. [What Teddy calls “nostalgia.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus)

You might feel that longing in your heart. You might feel an ache in your arms. Or maybe there’s another part of the body that is connected to the item.

Or, you might feel…nothing.

And you wonder why.

Not so much “why do I know longer feel anything about this item?”

That part, you get. We change as people and things that were once really important to us no longer are.

But perhaps you wonder, “what has changed in me that this item no longer matters?”

And then, at least for me, there’s kind of a moment of mini-reckoning.

You have this thing. Once upon a time it mattered to you. It no longer does. It no longer evokes anything.

Then, the question is: can you part with it?

Can you gently express gratitude for the role it played and let it sail off into the proverbially sunset?

[One day I will die.](https://open.spotify.com/track/2QpwuUCJlNUQqPfpF0ljrL?si=63c5f187248c4271) Everything will be let go of then, whether I want to or not.

Perhaps practicing along the way makes it easier. Maybe not. I don’t know.

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*Originally published on [jer979](https://paragraph.com/@jer979-2/identity-filters)*