(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet)
"Believe what your heart tells you when you ask, 'Does this spark joy?'"-Marie Kondo
Tidying?! You must be kidding, right? How can some girly art of neatness do anything important?
I'm studying by book with a Japanese "tidying master" this month. The teaching is that if you learn to keep your physical space in order, your life will follow, and so, on out into the world.
Does this spark joy?
This is what the master advises one ask oneself. If yes, you need only decide, in an eventual but later step, at the end, where it will live. (Yes, each thing is alive with its own spirit and has its own preferences in this system of philosophy.)
So I drill down deep into my feelings about each and every object, one at a time, holding it in my two hands, perhaps even smelling it (!)
But first, you pile all of your stuff into a heap on the floor. Then lift up each thing you would like to keep because it sparks joy. In this way, you develop a new skill, that of homing in on what brings you that pleasure spark. It's not about getting rid of stuff, but embracing the things you love.
If it does not pass the joy test, you thank the object for what it has given you, and let it go. You come to realize you may have kept a thing around because of fear that maybe in the future you might need it, even though you never use it. If your parents suffered scarcity and did not have enough to meet their basic needs, you may have unconsciously imprinted attitudes you weren't even aware of. Maybe keeping more than you will ever need of this or that reflects this basic need for security.
These fears usually reside in our beliefs about the past or the future, because in the present we obviously have enough. Nor is this dysfunctional scarcity thinking restricted to persons suffering actual lack. People of every wealth and income category tend to believe they need -just a little- more than they now have.
Or maybe you have kept a thing out of obligation or guilt, even if you never even use it. In that case it is the thought that counts, not keeping the gift or souvenir forever. Take a picture of it before you kiss it goodbye.
Then, simply release the object with love!
One thing you learn doing this process is how much you actually do have! I kept getting more things because the six or ten I already had got lost in the heap of debris in the back of the drawer. Out of sight, out of mind. So you realize that the difficulty was you didn't know what you had because you didn't see it anymore!
Did you ever go out shopping just to be in a friendly, orderly, appealing atmosphere? Marie Kondo suggests you set up your storage like a store display.
This skill of the discerning and responding to your joy becomes a new habit and a new way of moving through the world. A way of turning toward a positive instead of resisting a negative. In this way, everything you are surrounded by at home gives you joy.
I wonder if this transfers also to tidying mental clutter. This is a skill of attitude that could become a habit.
Being grateful with each thing is a key to this power. In fact I realize that a lot of what I kept around me was draining my energy in a subtle way. I wonder how much of the world's problems could be prevented by simply offering commons spaces and systems that are joyful and beautiful in their simplicity. Architecture and systems design for world success, as Bucky asserted.
But only providing a beautiful functional commons without also bringing awareness won't be enough to transform the world. We also have to consider each thing and our feelings around it, and find the harmony in the relationship. Then we may decide to have different things around us. And it need not be avoiding scarcity as much as bringing joy that will guide wise decisions.
"People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking"-Marie Kondo
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