I wrote a post recently about this COVID-19 global pandemic and all of the things that I am now realizing I no longer want in my life. But what about the rest of it, what about the things that I want to keep in my life, from here on?
I’ve enjoyed running into neighbors on my daily walks, talking 6′ away from each other, spending more time to say hello and not just rushing, hiding, hoping the other person doesn’t say hi so I can get back to what it is I want to be doing. With more time, without commutes and with the whole family at home, many of us have more chances to just be: to simply allow. It’s nice.
Late last year, I realized that my team – not one of them – had read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I was shocked, like amazed, that this group of readers and curious souls had not read the book that I consider to be one of the best ever published. So of course, I bought one for each of them. I’m not sure if they ever opened it.
You can disagree about this being one of the best books ever published. However, I have seen no other book be so simple to digest and so important for how to live a life.
Keep it simple.
Organize your belongings and you’ll organize your mind.
That’s all there is to it.
That book, I think of it monthly, and I talk about it constantly. You might be sick of it by now, actually, dear reader. I feel that Kondo’s book, more than any other, has the potential to reach all of us. There’s no mystical talk in it. It’s not one side or the other, not Buddhist or Christian or Left or Right. It’s just this: clear your shit out.
How amazing is that? How incredible is it to get rid of the things that are holding you back and then look at your life in a new way?
For me, this pandemic has done that.
I’m lucky. I don’t work in healthcare. I am not a teacher. I don’t have kids, and don’t have to help teach said kids while running my business. As of now, I still have a job. And I don’t have the virus. I get that many people all over this world are not as lucky, and I feel for them. My heart aches for them.
This post isn’t that. It’s for those of you who have a little more time, whether being without a job for the first time in years, or without a commute for the first time in ever, or without the daily hassle of running into chatty Cathy at the water fountain. This post is for you.
This extra time, it’s priceless. It’s allowing us to look at our lives and say: this is what I want to keep. This is what I don’t.
It’s magic. It might actually be the life-changing magic. That magic that Kondo so quickly realizes: shit holds us back. Clutter holds us back.
That clutter can come in things. It can come in being in the wrong job. It can come from busyness. It often comes from not having those simple moments to yourself to just breathe.
This pandemic is allowing some of us the chance to tidy up. To clean out, to zone in.
I love that.
So I have mentioned what I wanted to get rid of. And today I’ll talk about what I want to keep. The walks as I mentioned above, for one. The cooking dinners, often with my husband at the island, chatting with me as I chop. The ability to film more senior yoga videos, and the time to write this blog, what I am now realizing is quite frankly one of my most favorite things to do.
And, to watch the birds. I think the best $200 I have ever spent was on my initial supply of bird feeders, bird seed, and poles to hang them on. Birds, and squirrels, they fascinate me. I cannot get enough of them: their calls, their flight patterns, the way they eat their foods, the way they fight with each other for said food. This time to watch the hummingbirds, cardinals, woodpeckers, chickadees, and many more which I don’t know the breed yet, is simply priceless to me.
Time to be alone. Space. Breath. Movement. Learning. Sharing. Time with my family. Time with those who I cherish the most.
That’s what I want to keep.
How about you? What’s worth keeping?
Happy Sunday.
Love, Jen