So, today I did something that has set my teeth on edge: I inadvertently deleted 22,000 emails from my various Gmail accounts. Not put them in the trash – deleted forever.

Why did I do this? Long story. And that’s actually not important.

What is important is observing how I felt and the stages of feelings that occurred to me in a mere 10 hours since the event.

At first, the idea of losing every single email I had written since, well, I first had email was a huge loss. Loss of data, loss of connection, loss of a sense of self. There was a lot of swearing in the first first minutes.

Then the ringing in my ears started: what if someone asks me for something? What if I need to refer back to this old email or that one. Or someone asks me about something I sent them five years ago.

That was a good few hours of panic. And then I started getting nostalgic for the sentimental emails: the ones back and forth when I bought my house, the ones with my family in NC when my dad died. The one that had the wedding speech I made at my goddaughter’s ceremony.

And then, for a few hours, my mind was very quiet. Much too quiet. I thought: what am I without this history of emails? It’s as if I’ve been plunged into witness protection, and have no past. Only today.

And then I began to smile. How freeing it is to have no history, no past. Only what happens today. Only what I make of this moment. And this one.

It’s amazing to me how we define ourselves by our digital presence. Similar to how we define ourselves in the physical world, we equate depth, breadth (and girth) with value. But shouldn’t the measure of ourselves be not in what we hoard in terms of material, or even digital, possessions, but rather in the experiences themselves and the compassion that we give to others?

Am I going to come across moments when I will need a thing or two that I no longer have in my saved email, sure. But I should be able to ask someone for help in providing a copy of what I lost, and hope that their sense of compassion will fulfill that lack of information.

This exercise seems like a forced exercise someone like Marie Kondo would do. But rather than decluttering my clothes closet, I rid myself of all the digital clutter in my virtual closet. And I suddenly feel free.

Free to start anew. To shed what no longer fits in my journey right now, which makes way for new things. Like this blog.

There are two reasons we can’t let go:  an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.

Marie Kondo