Plowing the mind: Remains of the day...

my desk february 16, 2011

When there's so much flotsam and jetsam layered on a desk and threaded throughout a calendar, it's pretty easy to not notice what's gone missing in a life.

In a small house, spaces fill up fast and a good amount of energy is spent in sorting, arranging, managing stuff. You continually fear that you'll end up as a news item, buried alive by the careless nudge of a tower of old newspapers. So you sort, arrange, manage, repeat.

I'm re-reading a book that my cousin Cynthia recommends to her clients - "It's All Too Much" by Peter Walsh. Cynthia runs her own estate sale business and was telling me how many times she walks into homes that are filled with clutter. She sees how her clients' lives have become defined and constricted by what they accumulate. I read the book a couple of years ago and found it interesting and certainly saw myself in there not a few times. But this reading was different. One idea leaped out and has refused to leave me alone - "don't start with the clutter."

That may not be the way he wrote it. But it's the way it looked when it landed in my brain. It took my carefully calcified opinion as to what needed to be done and turned it on its head. If I couldn't start with the clutter, where could I start? I want to start with the clutter. The clutter is what's... cluttering. It's in the way. It needs to go.

But like all revelations, you don't really stand a chance when trying to fight them. So I listened to what came next. Of course. If you don't lead with the clutter, you have no choice but to lead with your vision. You begin to ask yourself: "How does my home serve my notion of the life I wish I had?" "Do the things I own help me achieve that life or distract from that vision?" "Does this item enhance and advance the vision I have for the life I want?"

Pretty simple. Pretty life-changing.

I didn't have to read too much further than that. I got it. It was an "AHA" moment. The heavens opened and the angels rushed to my side. Some ideas are so clear that you wonder how you've lived as long as you have and never encountered them before. What else have I missed?

In starting with clutter, I had begun with the one thing that paralyzed and petrified me. No wonder nothing had changed. So, I reasoned, starting with that which brings me joy, hope, peace, and fulfillment might actually produce something that could possibly, faintly, look like progress. At the very least it would be more fun.

I started thinking about the spaces in my home that function as they should. The spaces that bring me joy when I look at them. The spaces that hold the things I can find easily. Then I imagined everything like that.

I didn't just re-imagine my home. I re-imagined my life. I looked at the things I loved and loved to do and tried to imagine them occupying a bigger part of my thought and my day. It actually was kind of shocking to see how easily the important things had gotten gradually squeezed out and the ordinary and mundane had taken over.

What had happened to reading, writing, praying, connecting?

I didn't notice they were gone. In their place were the chores, the bills, the errands, the emails, the facebook, the piles, the pods.

A sculptor doesn't stare at the mighty chunk of marble in his studio and visualize what he has to carve out. He sees the form of what he's creating. He sees what is disguised by the excess.

And that's what I suddenly saw. I looked into the giant marble chunk of my life and I saw what was in there struggling to get my attention.

Once you see it, there's no going back. You can't look at the mighty chunk the same way again. You're less awed with the amount/quality/shape of what needs to be carved away and more awed by what you love. Less impressed with the effort required to chip away the pieces, and more impressed with what you'll discover when you do so.

And so I put on my safety goggles and pick up my chisel and mallet. I pitch off the bigger chunks of stone and as I get closer to the figure inside, refine my tools and my motions. Until the marble matches the vision.

I'd been mesmerized by the excess. Now, I look around my home to see what serves the life I want to live. What parts of the hidden form have already appeared, apparently without my notice or help. I take photos of different spaces in and around my house - reminders of the beauty and order that have been my companions all along. And it is that beauty and order that will serve to remind me of the hidden form I'm chipping away to reveal.

And now, back to my desk. The vision I have for my desk is this: a place where I can find what I need to find, think what I need to think, and create what I need to create. Not too much to ask of a desk, I think. I clear a space. I begin to blog.