Tidy Up the Nest

Tidy up the Nest

Because it will change how you feel. How about this–if you are a wealthy white executive-type guy, probably the most useful restorative practice you can engage in is to clean your own space. Why? For the same reason that the person sitting across the fire from you can see you most clearly. Because you don’t do this, since you don't have to. And because you don’t do it, you don’t understand what it requires, and so you don’t value it. And because you don’t value it, you don’t take care of the people who do it, and you create a world, in your image, that doesn’t appropriately value people who do it. This is why teachers are underpaid, why domestic workers are underpaid, why farm-workers are underpaid. If you had to do any of those jobs for any sustained period of time, you wouldn’t permit them to be underpaid, because they are really hard jobs. Make sense? Put every CEO in America on his hands and knees with a toilet brush and make him clean up his own shit splashes, and we’d have a different (and better) world.

The space you live in shapes how you feel. This is why it is hard to achieve health in dangerous neighborhoods. This is why it is hard to feel organized in a dirty or messy house. As a creative person, I know that there is an oscillation between order and disorder. When I’m immersed in something creative, there is increasing disorder. As a project finishes, resolves, it comes together at a higher level of order. This is expansion and contraction, in-breath and out-breath. People who delegate the restoration of order are less creative and insightful. Make a mess, then clean it up. Lean into both sides of this.

Get rid of clutter, get rid of things that don’t bring you joy. Organize your space, organize your time. The more organized you are, the more time you will have. Organize your mind. Use the physical act of organizing your space to organize your mind. This is what chop wood, carry water means in Zen. Apply organization in your life, the way you apply mindfulness. Apply it physically, to spaces. Apply it emotionally. Apply it mentally. Keep updating your mental models, carrying forward what serves, discarding the rest.