I was working in the garden recently - it is still winning the race - cleaning up some plants overgrowing walls and trimming others. It occured to me that these plants need trimming and cutting so that they can flourish more next time around. Removing the extra twigs and leaves allows them to focus their resources so to speak, so that they can come back stronger. It is probably why caring for bonsai trees is so popular in Japan - insert the scene with Mr Mijagi from the "Karate Kid" here - you cut and form a little tree to grow in a certain way, to get rid of what it does not need. Very Zen.
It is the same in life. I am trying to do a major cleanup act in the house, getting rid of all the stuff I do not need. I helped some friends move a few weeks ago, and like me, and my family before me, they have tons of stuff, paper, magazines, files,... I was wondering; how much of that do you really need to lug around ? Do we ever look at these things ? Are they not a burden you literally carry around ? I saw a desk once in a company I was visiting with a sign "If a cluttered desk means a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk mean ?" Exactly an empty mind, exactly what we aim for in zen and other meditation techniques.
Do not get me wrong, my mind is far from empty ... But I am working on it. And there are some great tools to help you. Here are some techniques you may have come across before, with my personal sauce added:
- Get rid of all those scraps of paper, correspondence, files. If you have a scanner on your Mac or PC there are some great tools like Evernote to help you. The advantage is you scan a paper and it gets saved in the cloud, you can never loose a disk with info or misplace it ! On top of that Evernote syncs on PCs, Mac, iPhones, all kinds of other PDAs. So you are on the road and you can recall that important ad you scanned in front of your PC. It is like carrying a big file cabinet around. You can tag docs and search, so no more hours of sifting through paper files. Highly recommended. Supertip: whatever you use to scan, save in an open or industry standard format like pdf or jpg. I guarantee you those Word files might not be searchable in 10 years...
- Not used or touched it in say 6 months ? Maybe time to get rid of it permanently....
- When you clean up, take hold of an item and ask yourself "what is the worst that could happen if I throw this away ?". Not an acceptable practice for living creatures and relatives mind you...
A special word here about books. I used to be one of those people that "builds a bookshelf", keeping interesting books, novels I enjoyed and may want to read again, books I would like to read some day (the majority...). Now I think the energy in books is when they get passed around and can bring joy to other people, there is no purpose in letting them gather dust on my bookshelf. I am a member of Bookmooch, a great service where people send books to others who request them and get credits enabling them to get other books in return. Highly recommended. Have a look at my inventory.
