my friend ramona gave me a really rad housewarming gift a few months ago. a container of groovy colors and sections that holds the following: popcorn, chips, pretzels and nuts. but i don’t use it for that. i use it as a catch-all thingy in my kitchen. i am compulsively neat
(read: slightly ocd) and don’t like little bits of stuff all over my house. so this container — with it’s separate compartments — makes my life a little more neat, a little more tidy…a little more manageable. sigh, sigh, sigh, oy vey. if only all things in our lives were this easy to organize, devise, compartmentalize, categorize. but you and i both know dear reader, that this is just not the case. there is no rest for the wicked, no way to stop the constant flow of endless little bits of one’s life: bills, relationships, jobs, children, friends, ups, downs, et cetera. until recently, i have tried in vain to make everything fit into a myriad of aptly named little categories of which only i know the definitions. tried to keep everything separate. tried to keep everything together. keep it all in it’s place — for me, for everyone else. FAIL. it’s a set up for failure. all things are connected. loosely, tightly, and every tension in between. i see my heightened neurosis* in this regard. it’s where i get stuck. i think that maybe liberation and freedom come from letting it all go. letting it all just come undone. bleed together. i am learning (EVER so slowly, ahem-) that nothing in this life really belongs in a box, within a compartment. i may like to keep my house a certain way, but out here in the real world, keeping everything in line -from running together- is a fruitless effort and to keep on trying just seems like going against the natural flow of life. the only thing i can really do is to keep my side of the street clean. be honest. be gracious. fearless and in the moment. no separation necessary.
the chips and the pretzels cannot stay apart for long.
©littlebrownbutterfly
* from a lecture by pema chödrön