365 Things and Abundance

My family has committed to letting go of one thing every day in 2017. That’s 365 things. 365 articles that we will be donating, selling, or disposing of. That’s a lot of things. And yet it does not feel daunting to let go of that many items by doing it a little at a time. 

Abundance

Already we are coming face to face with our abundance. When I look just in my kitchen cupboards I can count hundreds of items. When I include my clothes and garage, basement and storage closet, the number of possessions is astounding. We are truly blessed. We have enough items to have choice. We have enough tools and utensils to have specialized gadgets. We have colour, variety, and texture. But we do not NEED all of that.

In coming face to face with our abundance we also come face to face with our complexity. Stuff takes organization and space and cleaning and planning. Less stuff means less things to manage. And less stuff results in simplicity and space. I crave more simplicity.

Simplicity is part of the reason I enjoy camping and long road trips in our van. We have simple tools, simple food, simple clothes, and simple choices. We make do. We make up. We create. In our most simple lifestyle we have even greater abundance than in our overly stuffed house. 

Space

Many organizing books have been written about how you can strip away your possessions until the only things you are surrounded with are things that bring you joy. But what if it wasn’t the remaining items that bring you joy but instead the space around them - to truly see them - that makes them beautiful? A single antique teacup contains a measure of beauty greater than a china cabinet filled with them. Does it not? Is it the space that allows for appreciation? An art gallery meticulously plans the number of pieces of art to allow the viewer the space needed to take in each piece. If the gallery is too full, the viewer is overwhelmed and unable to enjoy any of the art.

As my family sheds the layers of years of accumulation, we are sifting through what is important to us, and digging deeper into what it means to have enough. I am already anticipating that we might need to do the same thing again in 2018. We are craving the awareness of what really brings us joy, the space and time to reveal in it, and the lightness of a life simplified.

Suggestions

If you are also wanting to do this, here are some of the things that are working for us:

• We printed a simple list style calendar so we can write down the things we are letting go of. Not to keep an inventory but to allow us to gather up 7 things on the weekend and make sure we allocated something to each day.

• We do it on weekends instead of one thing every day. It actually takes a few minutes to “see” the items we own and to get into the mindset of release. It is faster to gather 7 things once into that mindset than it would be to have to get into that mindset every day.

• We have a large bin in our hallway to put the things we are letting go of. It is not so that we can look at them and take them back, but to remind us that we are doing this so we keep up the momentum. We then box up the items that are for donation when there are enough. We also post a few items at once for sale instead of one at a time. 

• We are not concentrating on any one area of the house. We simply wander through the house and open cupboards, closets, and drawers. When we see something we do not want or need, we grab it. It would be more overwhelming to me to have to sort through a single drawer and not only part with 7 items but also organize it. I am allowing the organization to happen as the number of items slowly diminishes.

We are one month in and already we are experiencing a different relationship to our things, discussing “stuff” and what it means to us, and feeling excited about the space we are creating.

I will be writing more about this journey over the year reach out by email if you are going to join me. I’d love to hear your revelations too!

Check out these updates: 365 Things and Music, 365 Things - A Slow Trip to Less

In the End There is Only You

In the end, there is only you.  

I am sure that doesn’t seem like much of a lesson.  In fact, it seems sort of self-centered.  But let me explain.

In 2001, I was opening a Sears store in North Bay.  I was one of four managers (along with our store manager) whisked along in the stress and mess of staffing and merchandising a brand new store.  September 20th was the Grand Opening date.  We were 9 days away from the Grand Opening when 9/11 happened.  If you’ve ever worked retail and opened a store, you can just imagine the state of that building. There were no phone lines, no TV’s, heck in places there were no floors or walls!  It was utter chaos (it always seems to come together in the last 24 hours) but we were in no condition to open at that point. And we were in our own little bubble of concerns.

Someone from our store, probably out grabbing some food on their coffee break, happened to walk by the Sony store down the mall (thank you Sony for having TV’s). They saw the news reports and came back to the store to let us know what happened. We all had to go and watch the news together to overcome our disbelief. 

North Bay, Ontario is a little town but it has a military presence with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and a military base nearby.  Many of my staff were wives of soldiers and in those first few days after 9/11 there was a lot of concern that they would be required to go to war.  We continued to open the store, but I had to set up emergency phone lines to allow these wives quick access to their spouses, should the situation change.  That sentiment of fear, anticipation of their men leaving them, and a sense of innocence lost and along with it trust in humanity, rubbed off on everyone.

I can remember very clearly sitting in my living room staring out the window wondering if my husband would be called to serve too.  Now we don’t have conscription in Canada so the chances of him being enlisted were slim. But when your world gets rocked as heavily as all of ours had during 9/11 you are never quite sure of anything anymore.  I had a 6 year old at that time too.  So there I sat wondering what might happen and fearing the world my little boy would be brought up in.  Would he even have a chance to grow up?  And then I looked at the sky and trees and listened to the birds sing.  

You know the birds didn’t even stop to ponder the plight of the humans!  They were busy getting on with their lives, digging worms, singing for their territories, and flitting from tree to tree.  The trees and sky didn’t seem to care either.  The trees swayed gently in the breeze and the sky stretched out in the morning light to welcome the day.  And I sat in thought.  I had the largest emptiest spot in my gut where my confidence should have been.  What if I was going to have to raise my son alone?  What if I had to endure loss after loss in life during a war?  What if I wasn’t able to provide a safe world for my son to grow up in?  What then?  And the sun kept shining, and the birds kept singing.  And then the peace came.  

The peace was the knowledge that I had everything I needed right now, right here, exactly as things were.  I had me.  Even if I suffered unspeakable pain, even if things were terrible for the world and my family, I had a constant companion through it all. I looked up at the sky and the tops of the trees and imagined that if I were to die right there, I would still have had everything because I had me.

I didn’t die - obviously - but I imagined that as you are dying that it will not matter who is sitting at your bedside. It will not matter if someone is holding your hand or not.  In those last moments on earth you will be reflecting deeply with yourself.  

You will be asking yourself what it was like to live and if you lived a good life.  You won’t be answering questions other people ask you.  You won’t be worrying about whether you made them happy in your actions.  You will be wrestling with your own expectations.  Did you do everything you wanted to?  Were you true to yourself? Did you live up to your purpose?  Did you learn and love and listen to your heart?  In the end, when you are dying, you are alone with you.  Only you.  

It took the tragedy of 9/11 and the shift in my world from certainty to uncertainty for me to come face to face with myself.  I realized I had better get really good at being with me throughout the rest of my life, because in the end there is only you.

There are no Wrong Decisions

Can I come to grips with the thought that "there are no wrong decisions"?

Decisions can be daunting. I know that by making a choice I am saying yes to one thing and no to another. I know that there is really no sure way to know the outcome of each decision. It might go well, better than anticipated. Or it might go terribly wrong, with unseen complications. So I can find myself paralyzed by my decisions and sometimes make no choice at all. 

This paralysis is wrapped up in the fear of making the wrong choice and the worry of having to recover (if I can) from a poor decision. This fear is complicated and multifaceted. I not only fear the outcome of my decision but the potential loss of ‘face’ with my friends, peers, and family. I fear the embarrassment of failure, the humiliation of mistakes, and the shame of not being right. What if I could set this fear aside and what if there was no wrong decision?

My fears cannot prevent a complex, uncertain, and volatile future from happening. Despite all of my best efforts to predict the best decision, there are so many variables and complexities now that I cannot anticipate everything. 

So what if I didn’t try to?

My best solution is to make a decision, any decision, and to constantly correct and adjust as new information and ramifications arise.

I find great solace in the idea that there are no wrong decisions. There is only a choose-your-own adventure quality to life and that I will simply experience a slightly different story line as a result of my choices. Who is to say that the plot of each of those stories is better or worse, right or wrong? 

When presented with an unanticipated consequence of my decision-making I could spend time imagining that the other choice would have been better and would have gone off without a hitch. But there is no certainty in that. In fact, I would argue that it is just as likely that there would have been some unforeseen consequence to that decision as well. 

Instead of imagining that the result of a decision will be a path of perfection and ease, I instead imagine the path will be filled with brambles and obstacles. Opportunities to learn, adjust, and refine. This releases me from the idea that one path would have been perfect. Instead both paths would result in some learning and growing, and neither was ‘right’. Or both were ‘right’.

You see, I believe that life is simply meant as a learning experience. Learning happens in all situations, both positive and negative things that happen. So no matter what choices I make, I will learn something. How then can I be wrong?

And when I cannot imagine that both decisions could be right, I try this framing instead. There is a resulting storyline that will come from every decision. The very best stories told include a hero who is able to recover after a grave error in judgement or a decision gone wrong. So instead of berating myself for my decision, I embrace the storyline I have created and become the hero who overcomes.