THE nicest thing about my old mobile phone was the stored messages.

Dating back about three years, they detailed the highs and lows of life my life, and those of my family and my friends.

There were some lovely words, some not so nice – there was one from my youngest daughter telling me to hurry home because ‘Dad is being horrible to me and siding with Molly (her sister) and saying she can have the laptop’.

Others were sent by my daughters while on trips abroad or at pop concerts, and I could feel their excitement through the few brief words.

Some – I know, this is disgustingly corny – said simply ‘I love you mum’ and others from friends made me laugh, even on the umpteenth viewing.

Looking through them used to cheer me up on my journey to work. I say ‘used to’ because they are no more. They suddenly disappeared without warning, leaving me with an empty ‘inbox’ and ‘sent’ box.

I was mortified and aghast – this is the 21st century after all – when my phone provider, EE, said there was nothing they could do.

I was both sad and angry, but when I spoke to friends, some said that they didn’t keep any messages and cleared their phones every day. I had to admit, it was nice having a phone that didn’t constantly need culling when its memory became full. And I started to ask myself, did I really need to hang on to all these messages from the past? Isn’t it better to live in the present?

This week I read about a woman who lost every single photograph of her twenties – pictures documenting a whole decade of her life, from university onwards, and including images of her late husband. She said that initially “my stomach tied in knots” but that, over time, she felt “an odd feeling of liberation” in not having a “shrine” to her past.

Constantly looking back can clutter the mind. I often dwell pessimistically on not-so-great events in my past, when I should be facing the future with optimism. It’s a bit like hoarding things you don’t really need within the home – I know mine is in need of a good clear out.

Losing phone messages and photos are nothing compared to what some people do purposely, selling or giving away every trapping that has so far made up their life. They want to start completely from scratch, maybe after a divorce or other life-changing event, and feel a need to shed their former skin.

At times that’s tempting. But at 50-something I just couldn’t be bothered. Another life? I’d more than likely make a hash of that one, too.