What we collect says something about us -- but it's not always what we think.

I don't know anyone who doesn't collect something.

It may be old books or tacky pottery or even fine art. We all collect something.

Why? Well, because it appeals to us. On one level or another. We like it.

And what we collect does say something about who we are. But it may not be what we think.

For instance, I know a professor at a university who has a collection of giraffes. All kinds and sizes of them, filling every shelf in her office. But she didn't intend to collect them. She bought one somewhere, on a trip, and a student saw it in her office on a shelf and gave her another one. Word got around, and soon she had giraffes coming to her from every direction. She told me that she's not that fond of giraffes, has no connection to them (emotionally), but she's getting them left and right.

So anyone visiting her in her office would assume that she's crazy about giraffes. Not so. It's a collection that has assumed a life of its own.

Most of us collect things because they do have a connection to our lives -- certain art or objects we've gathered on our travels -- but that's not always the case. Sometimes we collect things for reasons that we don't quite understand.

For instance, I have a collection of coffee mugs. Not the ones from places I've visited -- Austin, Texas, or Yellowstone National Park or wherever -- but cups that have been crafted, one of a kind, by artisans, with their names etched or inked on the bottom.

From that bit of information, you might assume that I'm a coffee fanatic, insisting my brew be, if not from Starbucks, at least french-pressed. No way. I do buy coffee beans and grind them, but my coffee-maker is a Mr. Coffee from Target ($29.99). I like a cup in the morning but don't meditate over it.

So why do I need these "original" mugs?

I think it's because my thumb doesn't fit in most of those cups that come with your standard set of dishes and cups. The thumb part isn't big enough, and the cup itself isn't either. I started buying the artisan mugs because they fit my hand. And once I did, I looked for others and bought them every time I found one that "felt right". Unfortunately, I now have at least a dozen in my kitchen cabinet. I've since gone cold-turkey on buying more.

But my point is that someone looking at my collection might assume that I'm a coffee junkie, which is not the case: a cup in the morning, and that's about it.

I also have lots of clocks. Artistic clocks -- one is an old LP record with hands attached -- and one that chirps bird sounds on the hour. In my basement office, I have six or seven clocks. Does that mean that I'm obsessed with time?

Probably not. I don't even wear a watch most of the time. So what's the deal with the clocks?

I honestly don't know. But maybe I'm more intrigued with time than I thought. (And when I think about it, I have to admit that I'm one of those people who knows what time it is without having to look at a watch or a clock: I'm very aware of time, even if I don't have a schedule to keep.)

Which may be what it is with us and our collections. We don't really know why we like those quilts or those Art Nouveau prints. We just like them. But they're still saying something about us, even if we don't know what it is.

We all know men and women who collect sex partners, one after another, never committing to any but keeping each one on a string. What's that all about? Well, it could be that we're keeping our options open, or it could be that we're trying to prove our selves attractive, over and over, to different people, or it could just be that we're afraid of commitment. In any case, it's probably not what we're telling ourselves.

Suppose you collect old copies of a magazine you've subcribed to but haven't gotten around to reading. The New Yorker is a classic case. National Geographic is another. (In another era, it was Life.) We like those magazines but just don't have time to read them every week, or however often they come out. So we pile them up, intending to read them later. And they keep piling up. We know we'll never get around to reading them, but we keep accumulating them. Why? We like to think it's because we really will read them someday but it's probably because we want to think of ourselves as the kind of people who do read them every week or month. In other words, we say to ourselves that we're collecting them to read someday but really we're collecting them to prove to ourselves that we're the kind of people who should be reading them.

Let's elevate it a notch and assume that you're wealthy and collect "great art". I mean, really expensive stuff. Did you pick that painting because it appealed to you or because some art consultant told you it was something that would appreciate in value over the years? In the first case, you trusted your instincts. In the second, you trusted someone else's (and for a price). So now that painting is on your wall, part of your collection done over the years at the suggestion of some "expert" or other. Do you like it? Do you like the others? Or are they just like those books in your bookcase that you've never read but that someone said you should have there?

If you didn't select that art yourself -- without knowing its value or who painted it -- because you liked it, aren't you being sort of hypocritical? If your collections reflect someone else's taste, it's not your own, right? Your collection isn't yours. It's what someone told you to put on your walls.

In other words, your collection of art is bogus. It has nothing to do with you. And what does that say about you?

On the far end of the spectrum of collectors are the "horders", those unfortunates who keep too many cats or clutter their living spaces with mountains of newspapers and such, so that a person can't walk from one side of a room to the other. They're collectors, too, but they do so out of mental illness or a need not to let go of anything.

True collectors pick and choose carefully what to collect, but they don't always know why they're collecting what they collect.

Let's imagine you fill your house with pictures of your children. That seems like a natural thing for a mother (or father) to do, right? But let's imagine further that those pictures dominate nearly every space of wall. What's going on? Are you trying to convince yourself, by all the photos of your kids, that they love you? Do they? Why do you need that re-assurance?

I knew a man who collected memorabilia of John F. Kennedy's life. He was poor but had so many photos and clippings and ticket stubs and everything you can imagine, all neatly arranged in boxes and frames and in scrapbooks. I asked him why he was so obsessed (my word) with JFK, and he said, looking at me with dis-belief, "He was our greatest President." Here was a man with nothing to his name but, as a teenager in the early 196os, he'd seen something he couldn't believe that I hadn't seen. In his eyes, everyone should be keeping JFK's memory alive.

We all have our reasons for collecting what we do, and it's probably not important why we do it. It's part of who we are, and aren't we all, in the end, kind of hard to explain? Good for us!