Is there a "clean gene?" Or is tidiness a reflection of discipline? My mother and father were very orderly people. I never have been. Does this tie to my love of happenstance, of serendipity, of discovery? My love of messiness and unknowing, and chaos?Is there room for cleanliness in chaos?
The Universe flies through time towards maximum entropy, or maximum disorderliness. It's an ultimately uninteresting state, in which nothing can happen. I notice that when my personal space is at maximum entropy, nothing happens.
I've been terrifically ill this week. Out of my head ill. I scared my wife.
"Hey kids," asked Xena, "Has your Dad been passing out or babbling like this all day?"
My ever alert children answered: "Um, maybe. Hey, since he's sick, can you go grocery shopping? We're out of kiwis."
I think I'm sick (not just because of being exposed to sick people in SoCal... I get exposed allatime, but only get sick when there's a reason) because it's time for me to discover why I clean up after myself. I made my first 2006 resolution Tuesday morning: to clean up my office and my files. Later that very day I began to get ill, and by Thursday I was experiencing lapses in consciousness.
I'm more than 20 years out of my Mom's house, and I still clean so she won't yell at me.
What if I discover that I can clean for my own benefit? That I clean for me? What does that feel like? Or look like? Cleaning at my own speed, according to what I want to achieve, is one of the pieces I need in order to dwell within my body's capacity.
Being dissassembled, I get to build a new cleaning strategy. One that births not from my Mom's, but from my own, inner voice.
Dad always told me that the truly lazy way is to pick up after myself as I go. I was always annoyed by this. I was even more annoyed when I realized he was right. I still don't do it all the time, but I find myself doing it more and more all the time. It really is easier (blast it).
ReplyDeletePart of what I am open to discovering is that tidiness is "good." If I start in Wichita and drive towards Miami, I'm getting further from Las Vegas. I mean, I do enjoy tidiness, but I don't aim for it.
ReplyDeleteSo I have to discover the benefit, to me, of living in tidiness. So far, I haven't perceived it.