My Dance Space/Baby Steps

My feed is cluttered with de-cluttering courses, tips, shows, and advice.  I’m not gonna lie, I’ve taken a few swings at de-cluttering in my time.  I’ve recalled that 300 square foot studio I spent my twenties in with affection.  I remember my stepmom marveling that I could clean the entire kitchen floor with one paper towel. 

It was a self-contained paradise of sorts.  I remember thinking, “I never want to own more than what I can pack in a suitcase and take on the road.” Now, there’s much more stuff, but also more life in my life.  

I joined a minimalist group but only read the headlines. My men like their stuff, a lot. Mike has not met a kitchen gadget he didn’t need, and new stacks of books arrive daily despite his Kindle acquisition.  

Ax’s legos have become a kind of creeping moss that grows throughout the house. And he loves that. And now there’s puppy stuff too. Brownie gets to have her material as well as her emotional and spiritual needs met in this house. 

So, I can declutter my stuff, and I do. Not the old notepads, office supplies, or art, but the clothes, the sundries, my books, that’s all relatively pared down. I love the feeling of spaciousness having less stuff around brings me.

There’s another kind of spaciousness I long for too these days — a kind of mental or spiritual spaciousness if you want to call it that.  I long to feel the gentle vastness of existence and the breath of the universe all around me and in me and coming through me. 

And I do feel it when I’m not too occupied filling up my time and my brain with stuff I don’t need. Or filling up my brain and my time with stuff that isn’t mine. It’s theirs and they get to have it. Sure there is plenty to do to support this daily existence and co-existence, but I have much more room in my soul than my required stuff takes up.

If I stop taking in information, and taking on responsibilities, engagements, worries, and projects that are not necessary I get more space to dance my dance in this world.  I have to have the discipline to do that, to trust that it’s okay to want more dance space for me. To want that more than the familiar comfort of fullness, of being busy, of trying to be good, and it’s okay to (lovingly) do something about it. Baby steps style.  I’m gonna keep going.  

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