UNNECESSARY THINGS

Life has a way of removing the things we once believed we could not live without.
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Never say never.

December 30, 2020, I agreed to do something I always said I would never do.

I’m not certain what I had expected, but the blonde hair that had been a part of me since pigtails did not grow back. In its place, the salt and pepper my mama was known for was now a part of me.

I didn’t hate it.

How could I?

It reminded me of whose I am.

I am going through a season of reminders. Some of them are hard to contend with—
There are parts of me that want to fall on my face and ask forgiveness.
There are so many revelations of wasted time.

I look at the woman with the salt and pepper hair, and I hear her whisper something I wish she had said much earlier:

The only way to add value…
is to subtract.

Yesterday, I unfollowed one thousand Instagram accounts.
One thousand pieces of a former life.
What startled me most was not the number.
It was the realization that I could no longer recapture the fascination that had once drawn me in.

Before disconnecting, I studied each profile with diligence and care. It was revealing to see how every single one of them, at one time or another, had been relevant to the unexpected journey that led me here.

This gathering of information, people, things—
Much of what we carry is not wrong.
Or even irrelevent.
Just… unnecessary.

And unnecessary things have a quiet way of costing us.
Attention drifts.
Clarity blurs.
Energy thins.

The life we long for becomes harder to recognize beneath everything we have enveloped it in.

It’s fascinating how little pieces of who we think we are can be so quickly stripped away. You would think I would cling to the Janene I once knew like a life raft. After sixty months and counting, I have become expert at letting go.
Hair.
Expectations.
Versions of myself that I once revered.

The woman who appears in the mirror now carries less of the life she once curated. Fewer distractions. Fewer identities. Fewer places to hide.

And yet something unexpected has happened.
She feels… fuller.

Not because something new has been added.
But because so much has been taken away.

For most of my life I believed value nested itself in accumulation. You gather. You add. You curate.
More knowledge.
More opportunities.
More relationships.

But illness has a strange way of interrupting that strategy. It subtracts. Quietly at first. Without asking. Hair, energy, certainty disappear.

And along the way entire identities begin to loosen their grip.

All along, I believe I may have had it backwards.
The value is not something added.
It is something revealed by subtraction.
Perhaps value was never something we gathered.
But uncovered in what remains.

NOTES

A Quiet Audit

Life has a way of subtracting without asking. Entire chapters of life quietly close.

But there is another kind of subtraction.
The kind we choose.

Not everything we carry is harmful. Much of it is simply… unnecessary.

Voices that fill our attention.
Expectations we inherited.
Obligations that once served a purpose but no longer belong.

Sometimes the life we are meant to live becomes difficult to recognize beneath everything we have gathered around it.

So this week, consider a quiet audit—
Not of your failures.
Not of your accomplishments.
Simply of what you are carrying.

What still belongs?

What quietly does not?

Choose one thing.

Just one.

One habit.
One digital voice.
One obligation that no longer aligns with the person you are becoming.

Remove it.

Not as punishment.

As refinement.

You may be surprised by what begins to return when the unnecessary things fall away.

Image: I rarely share this in between season, between bald and the woman I am today. My eyes look “far away” in this image, like I’m still trying to catch up with what just happened. Sometimes life rushes over us. Sometimes things are taken away. And sometimes we have the wisdom to recognize that subtraction was never loss.