Of the many things that define us as individuals, and there are many, many ways to cut this cake, is the ratio of what we keep to what we throw away. Some, for reasons of their own, keep everything: old letters, billing receipts from a dozen or more years, broken coffee cups, the tears of angels or saints, regrets and disappointments. Others keep hardly anything, preferring to travel "light". Some keep only what they value, like love and loyalty and closeness of friends. There must be, at the end, some ideal ratio that will bestow the highest value on us, some ideal weight that reflect the character of who we were based on what we kept and what we gave away.

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