We all have them, those things we can’t let go of. Not a crush or grudge, I mean keepsakes: an ex-lover’s T-shirt, your dead cat’s collar, or a beer mat from that trip up the east coast of Australia. But why? These items have no monetary value, they’re mundane to everyone else, and yet we cannot bring ourselves to part ways. What is it about trinkets that turn them into treasure? And what are you holding on to?

I’m not sentimental, in fact I’m pretty cutthroat when it comes to clutter. But I have collected a few things over the years. A teddy bear from my biological father — even though the man was a pig — and a congratulations card from my nana that still plays a tune years after she passed away. I cried the last time I opened it. It felt kind of cruel that the song lived on while she did not.

These things are all packed away in a box on top of a wardrobe at my parental home in Manchester. And this summer when I went back to England on vacation, I learned something about the tremendous power of sentimentality. It came in the form of a watch.

The watch belonged to my grandad, Tom. He helped raise me. We were partners in crime: skipping school, playing snooker and hanging out in his shed at the bottom of the garden. I adored him and he adored me. Tom was a deep thinker who could lend his hand to anything. He was cheeky, handsome and gentle. He was also riddled with cancer. Grandad was my hero, my first experience of fatherly love and my first experience of death. His passing broke my 8-year-old soul in ways I didn’t know possible. You’d have liked him.

It’s Tom’s watch that I’ve held on to, a cheap thing that’s never ticked in all the years I’ve had it. The brown strap all but disintegrated, so what I found myself clinging to was a dead watch face supported by a decaying bit of leather. I vaguely remembered the watch when it worked, sitting proudly on my grandad’s handsomely wrinkled arms. It had a crescent moon display with mountains and stars lit against a deep blue sky. Tom bought the wrong strap size for the watch and, being the cheapskate he was, manipulated the attachments by filing them down to fit. So, when I say this piece of jewelry has zero economic value, I mean it.

At home for the first time in five years, I found myself riffling through a stash of keepsakes. There was the watch. For whatever reason, I had an itch to get it restored. I took it to a repair shop and was told nothing could be done.

Thankfully I have a mildly (and wonderfully) neurotic stepfather, Stuart. He immediately tended to the watch, carefully taking it apart, fiddling with bits and cleaning dead skin from its crevices. He even bought a replica strap. After hours of suspiciously skillful labor, it ticked, and I cried. Why?

I think my reaction to the watch had something to do with hope. Seeing the flashing face and moving hands took me back to a time when I was naive. A time when I knew nothing of betrayal, cruelty or heartbreak. A time when I felt safe and self-assured, with the world at my feet and forever to play with. And with loving attention, maybe I could be her again. Broken things get fixed, life goes on.

I don’t know when trinkets become treasure. Nor do I know if we pick them, or they pick us. But I am certain there’s something you hold on to, and I’m sure these possessions can serve as powerful counterparts to consumerist culture. Reminding us that beauty and value come not from the shiny and new but from the stories, relationships and experiences that shape us. Like sedimentary rocks that build into mountains, trinkets gain weight and significance over time. They become keepers of our personal geology, each layer testament to where we’ve been and how we’ve grown.

Sentimentality isn’t about clinging to the past; it’s about respecting the whole of our experience and connecting it to the future. Keepsakes give us hope and strength to face whatever’s next. The things we collect are a way of saying: “This mattered, this counted. That happened, but I’m here.”

And if you’ve made it this far, who knows where next.

Emma encourages you to get in touch and welcomes your comments. Reach her at emma.leaning@shanghaidaily.com or follow her on X (@Leaningemma).