Spring Cleaning my Mind

It is that time of year. The daffodils are in bloom, the sun is out past dinner, and I am unsure if I should wear a winter jacket with gloves or a t-shirt. Spring is in the air and I am drinking it all in through all my senses, this year more so than previous years.

My mind has already jumped from all the habits I need to fully form yesterday, the unfinished tasks around the house, the trips I want to take, the pounds I want to lose, and all the angst that comes from this quarter year crisis. So this post is all about spring cleaning my brain.

I love spring cleaning and de-cluttering. It just feels right. After all those hibernating winter months, I am ready to let the fresh air in and dispose of the unused or outgrown items. It makes sense to sort through the useful, not so useful, and no longer useful in my kitchen and bedroom. But I would be remiss if I didn't address all the clutter that has accumulated in my mind. Those aspirations, ideas, nagging guilt, creative projects, initiated habits, and relationships that are all piled in my brain and only seem to hit you with the fresh air that comes with spring. As if my desire to enjoy the beauty of this new season is hindered by my guilt for not being what I think I ought to be. And by the time I recognize that I squelched my own springtime joy, summer is already rolling around.

So even though in January I didn't trim those branches that are now sprouting, I can still get ahead of some of the weeds in the flower bed before they become a miniature forest in a few weeks. Likewise, before this guilt and discouragement fertilizes into a thought wilderness, perhaps it is good to let go of what I haven't prepared and start working on those ideas I still have time to prepare.

Remember those New Years Resolutions? They still feel fresh and you may still be giving yourself a pass for not mastering any of those habits you planned to because the year is still young. Until you realize that the year is not so young and you are not nearly as advanced in those resolutions as you had hoped. So instead of refocusing your attention on the resolution most attainable, you pout at how much of a failure you are and slip into a self-hating funk fest. I have been down that road too many times to think it will do anyone any good. So it is time for a good old fashioned mental spring cleaning.

What is on my mind? My temptation now is to word vomit my to-do list. But that only exacerbates the problem. I have already written my to-do list down for later review, there is no need to rehash it in prose here now. Instead, I want to meditate on one thing. I am learning to stop living by self-explanation. Ever since I started this blog, I wanted to work on communication in a way that doesn't try to impose an understanding of every little thing that crosses my mind. But rather, I wanted to work on slow and thoughtful communication in bite-sized form that myself and my readers could actually chew on and swallow. Perhaps we can even enjoy the taste as it goes down.

So here was my thought for the day:

"But I tire of unlimited freedom; my chance whims feel like a burden is as true for children as it is for grownups, and for the poet who wrote those words. We need the ease and discipline of good habits to save us the effort of having to make lots of minor decisions such as, 'which foot goes after which?' Making liberty a religion will raise up the next generation to be vagabonds." -Charlotte Mason (1)

I would be remiss, however, if I did not ask, "At what point does self-imposed order become a task master?" I think the answer lies in the principle of "Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." In other words, the rules and principles that we live by to create order are meant to help us, not become our masters. It can be a subtle difference, but it is a difference.

In the age of "self-care", many of us are aware of the warnings about doing "too much" and "wearing ourselves out." While I agree to some extent that modern life has many temptations of stressing out, sometimes these warnings become their own cause of stress. For me, having order in my life is not about finding the perfect schedule or routine to make the daily mundane tasks effortless. Rather, it is to help me protect and value those mundane things that seem pointless in the moment, but are necessary for the long race. For example, I can see physical exercise as something that is just so hard to complete, but I need to buckle down and get it done in order to have a good day. The truth is, I can have a good day without physical exercise. But I won't have a good life. Instead, I am learning to shift my mind. Physical exercise is not merely a duty, it is a blessing. I have the blessing of being able to move and strengthen my body. By practicing physical exercise, I am showing gratitude in it's highest form. At the same time, I have to recognize that even with the mind shift, there will be times when it feels like a burden. There is very little I can do to mitigate that discouragement. However, I find articulating and acknowledging the struggle of battling our contradictory desires helps me to be more prepared and tackle those battles as they come. They don't feel as long term and consequential.

(1) This is actually a paraphrased quote from Charlotte Mason. The old links to the original quote are no longer available. But the paraphrase can be found here