What is Stuff?
This has been a week of tackling space, and the stuff that fills it, and I’ve made a few observations about that which id like to share with you, if only because that’s what I do, share observations; hopefully with a net result of value on your side as well as mine.
In the realm of stuff, what I’ve noticed is that we are certainly surrounded by it, and for my purposes today I’m going to call stuff anything that has been altered in some way by us, people, humanity, etc. In other words, the world of nature, from which everything derives, thank Universe, isn’t stuff until I move it, or alter it in some way.
The Attention Grabbers
So inside my home, and outside as well, there is stuff almost everywhere I look, and one thing all the stuff I see has in common is that it is all competing for my attention. Somehow or other, all this stuff wants to be touched, felt, seen, gazed upon–it all wants me to offer it my rapt attention. For a moment at least, and hopefully for a moment that will make an indelible mark on my psyche/spirit/whatever and set me coming back for more.
Some of that stuff is blatant advertising/marketing etc.; it’s only raison d’etre is this very thing: to grab my attention and then keep it, or to then act like a sleeper cell only to awaken when I am in a position to pull out my wallet and spend a bit more of my thin slice of the centralized currency pie, or my plastic promise to pay later (we are all Wimpy now).
The rest of it wants my attention for other reasons, known or unknown, to the maker or to myself or to no one. Not that I am ruling nature out of this look at me game; it’s the inventor after all. And today I’m just talking about stuff.
Look at Me!
So then. How do me get any psychic space if we are surrounded by a million little objects chirping look at me! look at me!! look at me!!! like a four year old on a sugar binge? Well, we can go numb, we can erect psychic blocks, we can take substances of one sort or another–and all of those methods, popular as they are, just serve to close down our experience of life and make our world a bit smaller.
We can also be more selective a out what we are surrounded with–on a macro scale as in location location location, and on a micro scale as in look around the house and get rid of the stuff that is deadening us, or eliciting behavior we aren’t happy with.
And so we arrive at the ever popular subject of de-cluttering. Now, I’m no de-cluttering diva, no organizing angel, that’s a definite unarguable truth; and I’ve noticed 3 things about clutter/stuff:
- Some of it is static–it’s there, and it’s relatively unchanging except for the gathering of dust.
- Some of it is dynamic–it ebbs and flows on a daily or a weekly basis.
- Some of it is alive–it changes of it’s own accord.
A Super Simple Strategy
So in taking care of clearing out some space in this world of stuff, I’ve discovered that if you want to make any headway, tackle the living stuff first. This is the nip it in the bud / a stitch in time saves nine way of doing things.
If I spend five minutes weeding my garden today, it will save me an hour or two next week. If I wash the dishes when they are freshly used, it will take half as much scrubbing as it would if I wait an hour or two, and the 5 minutes I need to tackle a small pile will be easier to find than the 30 minutes needed to take on an overflowing sink.
The dynamic stuff, on the other hand, is quite often a time sink. Like my desk. It ebbs and over-flows, and tackling it head-on is quite often futile, especially if I don’t change the habits that clutter it up in the first place, habits which if changed may just as easily prevent the clutter rather than build it–things like:
- Properly sorting the mail when it enters the house,
- Dealing with things when they come up if they are the sorts of things that need to be dealt with,
- Or tossing, recycling, shredding, or otherwise disposing of them if they are the sorts of things that really don’t matter.
And then there are the static messes which, really to be honest here, id simply prefer to get out of sight until the weather turns bad. So there.
The Authentic Stuff
Now, I had wanted to talk about authenticity and how it is often confused with transparency, or letting it all hang out, or telling everyone everything; and really at this point I’m going to have to leave that for another time mostly. The weather calls.
Suffice to say that “be yourself” works for me in all things and at all times. And if your self is boring and defensive (though I doubt it), so be it. If it makes you happy, go for it. If yourself is mysterious and alluring and as full of secrets as Laura Palmer, well, more power to you. If it makes you happy it can’t be that bad, eh?
In the simplest terms, authenticity comes from the insides, and isn’t about the outer view at all. It’s about being honest with yourself and walking your own walk. Sometimes that includes channeling the energy of someone else. Where would The Beatles have come from if not for Elvis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard? And sometime it means being so original that no-one else on the planet has a clue what you are going on about. And where would any of us be without Sarah Palin?
So there. Have a good weekend. Ciao.
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