THE HUNT IS EVERYTHING

I started collecting shells when I was six. I’ve gathered Conches from Bondi and Volutes from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Cowries from Fiji, Scallops from Spain, and Whelks from the Gulf Coast of Florida. There are also Puka shells from the north shore of Oahu (where I almost drowned), Moon snails from Cape Cod and Abalone from La Jolla. Each carries the memory of diving under salt spray waves and abandoning myself to the pull of tides.

What we collect says a lot about us. Our collections reflect our personality and passions. Sometimes, they stem from a need for control in an uncertain world. They also provide emotional comfort. Research shows that the personality traits associated with collecting are high openness and low neuroticism. Talk to any collector and they’ll tell you: the hunt is everything.

Novelist Vladimir Nabokov, the author of “Lolita,” collected butterflies. At his death, he had over 4,000 of them. Like his lead character, they were delicate, short-lived beauties. My daughter collects rocks and hotel keys. She’s a world traveler who loves to explore. A friend of mine collects cars, bikes, surfboards and colorful, tennis shoes. He loves to stay in motion. Collecting captures our past so we can behold it in the present. As Faulkner said, “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”

“Our brains are wired to collect things,” says neuroscientist, Daniel Krawczyk. It allows us to create an ordered world, which provides a sense of mastery and control. Collectors are often driven by a desire to reconnect with a happy or secure time in their youth. Their items are tangible links to those memories. My happiest ones include the ocean. Perhaps that’s why I used to tell my children that I was a ‘real mermaid.’

My mother was a collector, too, only now we call it hoarding. In her final days, she pushed a shopping cart through the streets of Long Island. Inside were plastic bags filled with a broken transistor radio, a flashlight without batteries, putrid clothes, empty lipstick tubes, plastic hairbands, men’s socks, food culled from garbage cans and an umbrella that didn’t open. I used to think it was junk. Only now, do I realize it gave her purpose, comfort and a collection of her own.