High Holy Days Journey with Amichai Lau-Lavie: 40 ways in 40 days to find your focus
DAY 20
On the drive back from the Catskills today – many more signs for yard sales than usual. End of summer rummage through what has to go.
But the urge to stop and rummage was curbed. Got enough stuff already.
In fact – time for a yard sale of my own: what can I get rid of so that I can have more room – or make more room for new?
Thus, today begins the shedding process. Closets, shelves, those under-the-stairs closets.
I give it quotas: 20 items of clothing (esp. those I haven’t worn for at least a year with the hope that ‘one day it will look perfect’: out) 5 books I’ll never really read or read already and can pass on. And so forth. Give gifts to friends, make Goodwill happy, fill up the trash.
Yes, this is merely a metaphor for the internal shedding, for making room within for the joys to come. But I am tired today, and not in best of spirits and I can do what my mother taught me to do at times like these: tidy the cupboards, slowly and methodically, tiding up inside the mind.
The goal, as E. reminded me today, is to live cleanly, happily, more focused and present and kind. Less clutter can only help.
20 minutes update: Biking to Brooklyn.
