Tidying to Save the World

(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

Say Something

 "I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear."-Oprah Winfrey 

 

It was hard. I don't know why. I am standing around the hardware store, waiting for my paint to mix, and I hear that old song again. It glorifies the old days of slavery in the south with lyrics like "the night they drove old Dixie down, and all the bells were ringing...but they should never have taken the very best"...

I am all for free speech and art, but I'm thinking- this song must come off as hostile to a black shopper, here in the USA. I have HAD it with that song, as well as with those Dixie flags I see on people's cars and apparel. No, it does not mean love for your home place, it means racist hate, pure and simple.

Who does your music, I ask the paint guy. He doesn't know, but I complain about it to him anyway. Getting no response, I go over to the cashier and wait to ask him. 

 

As I wait, a black man walks up to check out. This is a pretty white area so I marvel at the coincidence and take it as a sign. Go ahead, I'm waiting to complain about the music, I tell him. That song must come off as hostile and racist to a black person, I say to him, as we wait, and he affirms to me that it does, indeed.

He checks out and leaves, and I take up the matter with the two cashiers, who tell me this is a Sirius feed, but they do not offer to do anything about it. I wonder if you can order the non racist feed from Sirius. I ask for a manager. All around me all this time in hearing range are ten or so white guys, each with their manly hardware items, but no one says anything to me about it. No one says anything at all.

 

The manager strikes me as a kind and wise fellow who listens and thanks me for speaking up. I tell him to complain to Sirius and that the music was hostile to black shoppers and that it made me uncomfortable too. I thought it should make anyone uncomfortable! 

But it is even more uncomfortable for me to speak up.  I get shaky and sweaty and my heartbeat gets going all fast.  But I'm glad I did it. It helps when we speak up for others, like when men protest in favor of women's rights. Even as a person of the most common color in my neighborhood, (pinkish-orangish), as a person of gender, (guess!), I still found it so hard to get up the courage to say something. At least at this time in that place at least, no one was willing to publicly defend racist lyrics. This is some small progress. No one argued with me, but their silence itself said something.

 

I can only imagine how hard it can be for members of whatever group that are being attacked to complain. And I am filled with admiration for the bravery of all those people in the world living under oppressive regimes who could be killed for speaking up, but do so anyway. If they can, so can we.

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi

Elusive Orange Beings and Garden Planet Blues

(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet Manual:)

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."- Rumi 

 

 

There are dozens of them, bright orange, floating into view, between the layers of gray. As I stare, they just kind of fade away. All I see now is the blue of the sky...

 

...reflected in the pond . There must have been fifty of the glistening frisky creatures in the nearby cloud of orange, a school of floating carrots, and a couple dozen more in the second cloud, in the little mirage-flotilla a foot or two away from the first school.

 

 

I think they must first conjure up a swirl of pond muck around themselves, and then, on cue and in formation, and seemingly without even moving, they just subtly drop down into their cloud of camouflage.

 

 The pond abides all summer, but I observe the heron come by for fast food several times as the water level drops. No telling how many times this happens when I'm not watching. One day in just a minute or three, I watch the heron catch several carrot sized orange fish, flashing golden and silver in the sun. Too easy, I say!

 

So we mow and water and bring in two new pickup loads of beach sand. The nice soft dry kind. The fish love this. They come out and nibble on things around the slightly expanded pond edge and I think the sand gives them a taste of the ocean.

 

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman