This unsettling practice can open up space, time and relief.
I have too much stuff. That’s the bare truth.
Anxiety and guilt morph into a low-grade, psychic nausea, until I finally can’t take it anymore. Then I pay the best $89 of my life on Joshua Becker’s course, “uncluttered,” and I have my kitchen to show for it. It’s clear and clean and by far the most beautiful room in the house.
But when the momentum disappears, I don’t know why. I take a good look at what I’m thinking, and a pattern emerges. My life is in gridlock because of this pattern. The tyranny of What if I need this later paralyzes all forward movement.
For example, the bottom of our bookshelf consists of a collection of Tricycle Magazines going back ten years. These days everything’s available online, so why do I still have these physical copies? Because what if the apocalypse comes and there’s no internet and I can’t access these articles online?
Really? Sociopolitical upheaval has obliterated the grid and I’m going to be sitting on the couch reading a magazine? When I see it in the daylight, it’s pretty ridiculous.
So, how much of this What If Someday thinking fuels the rest of my decisions? I bought eye makeup that I don’t know how to apply, but it looked so awesome on the instagram girl. I don’t wear eye makeup, but What if I have to go to fancy events because my novel got published? Ha! I’ll be prepared for that imaginary future with just the right eye makeup.
Holy crap. Really?
So the idea is this. Lose the What if. Be someone with no future.
Look at your life right now, your furniture, your clothes, your things. Look at the nature of your attachment to them. It’s harder than you think, but so worth it. Without the future you’ve been imagining, what can you let go of? What can you give away?
When we really get that the moment we’re in is the only one we’ll ever have, a spaciousness opens up, a sense of deep breathing, clear sight.
But we also get that there are no guarantees we’ll make it to breakfast alive. It takes courage to see that — to know that this is it, right here, right now, and there’s nothing else. But when we do face those facts, we have no problem letting go of the ten year collection of Tricycle Magazines, the eye makeup., the box of herbal tincture ingredients we thought we’d learn use so we could be self sufficient when the world ended.
The world is ending every day. It’s ending right now.
And ... it will never end.
Let’s unclutter our thinking. Let's erase the future. That way, we can let the blessings of space, time and relief blossom in its place.
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