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“Spark Joy” = Tokimeki which is a feeling of excitement, palpitation, interest and a litany of things including “joy”. If all of your books give you tokimeki then keep them all. Konmari method is not about randomly tossing stuff away, it’s about valuing what you have.
Mari Kondo has a deep attachment to Shinto and was an attending maiden for a shrine for 5 years. A lot of the philosophies in her tidying at Shinto one’s, particularly animism.
Animism is the attribution of a soul to an inanimate object. You can see it in how she greets a home, thanks an item, or “wakes up” books.
To relate it to us foreigners, it’s a little like the tale of Peter Rabit. Who was loved so much he was given a soul and became “real”. It’s a feeling we can all relate to when we think of our most precious items which have given us the most joy, excitement or comfort.
She treats all the items and homes and clothes as little Peter rabbits. Waking them, greeting them, thanking them, treating them kindly (this is very important).
In treating the objects around us with care and kindness, we learn to treat our surroundings and ourselves the same way. We stop trying to fill voids with more things and learn to appreciate our space and the impact it has on our lives and the ones who surround us.
In the states, we think of organizing and tidying as a chore where we throw stuff away, almost arbitrarily or sometimes out of necessity. In arrogance (and a little racism, let’s be honest) we project this idea, our idea, of “tidying” onto Mari Kondo and her #KonMarie method.
We post articles calling it “woo woo nonsense”, rage about her “classism” and create memes mocking the concepts of “waking up” and “greeting” and pieces of her religion and identity (ahma give a pass to the one’s that illustrate people as objects to throw away).
We get people screaming about how they hate her because she suggests not keeping a dragon’s hoard of books without even looking at the “why” of it (which for bibliophiles is very unfortunate and just shows an ass ton of ignorance from the allegedly “well read”)
The “why” of it is, that if you treat your items as an extension of you, with a bit of your soul in them, you take care of them and love them. If you have a dragons hoard of stuff your items will deteriorate until you HAVE to throw them away.
I am thinning out my comic collection b/c the ones I wish to care for are starting to suffer because there are too many to care for properly. I am thinning out and storing extra items I can’t afford to replace properly so I don’t HAVE to replace them and can keep them for years.
Likewise, I still keep things I haven’t used in years because I still receive tokimeki from them. With things that do not give me tokimeki I store carefully (if useful) or donate so I can give more attention and care to the things that do give me those feelings.
It’s not a hard concept to grasp, but it is if you’re ready to devalue someone and shit on them without even thinking, reading or researching and ONLY considering things from YOUR or your cultures world view.
Like, it’s great you want to have more than 30 books in your house, but it doesn’t make you special, it doesn’t give you a personality and it certainly doesn’t give you an excuse to ignorantly shart all over someone else’s’ life work. #MarieKondo #KonMari
