JUNK OR TREASURE? You decide.

I want to talk about the difference between priceless family heirlooms and useless, albeit cool, pieces of junk. This is a topic that's very important to me, since I have quite a few family heirlooms that I plan on passing on to my spawnlings, as well as a few of my own things that I'd like to start as new heirlooms. I love old, historic things so much, that there is no doubt in my mind that if I were born as a dark ages pope or orthodox patriarch, I'd have been the one turning artifacts into sacred icons to be worshiped.

Yesterday, at my dad's house, we went together through a number of items belonging to my great grandpa Ray, including his old Mason stuff, some books, and pins and awards. My dad told me the stories behind each piece, stories that I never would have guessed. We had a long conversation about how if my dad had died without telling me these stories, I wouldn't have known that those old books had tremendous family historical value, thinking they were just cool old books. We discussed how we have that problem with all of the items left behind by my great grandpa Glenn, not knowing which of his items are heirlooms and which he just thought were cool and picked up somewhere.

In the end, we decided that the difference between a priceless heirloom and a cool old thing is a story. We established the goal of writing a brief description of everything of importance that we own on a little card and putting it on or in the item, as well as writing about them in our journals, so that our descendants can know clearly exactly why each item is worth keeping and passing on.

I suggest you do the same!