MARCH NEWSLETTER

TO CLEAN OR NOT TO CLEAN-THAT IS THE QUESTION?

I just left the house for a couple of hours to see my hairdresser. I thought it was safe to do so since Nicole was still sleeping peacefully, but it appears that I underestimated the power of the ninth month nesting instinct. When I returned I found the kitchen torn up, serving spoons and forks and cheese graters and chop sticks and some sort of kitchen implement I don't remember buying and various other assorted kitchen gadgets strewn all over the kitchen counters. It seems that Nicole decided that it was time to reline the cupboards and feel prey to fatigue somewhere along the way. After telling her to never begin a big cleaning project before consulting me first I set to pulling out and relining the drawers. I hate to admit it but Nicole was right to pull out those drawers. There was rat poop and chewed up straws and other abandoned nesting materials in the same drawer's as the kitchen equipment.

That same night Nicole and I watched the new show called "Wife Swapping". In it there was a mom who was a neat freak and another mom who's home was so chaotic there was animal droppings lying around the floor and the family never sat together at a table for a meal. The neat freak came into the messy mom's home and installed order. The messy mom went into the neat freaks home and bought her a cat. I thought for sure that the neat mom would get rid of the cat first thing upon her return but to my surprise she kept the cat and a number of other changes the messy mom made, creating a looser more friendly atmosphere in the neat mom's home. The messy mom just had a tantrum over the changes the neat mom made and let everything go back to how it was without making any changes towards the middle. The messy mom thought her lifestyle was an expression of freedom but really she was more bound by her habits than the neat freak mom. It got me to thinking. What side do I err on? Towards too neat and stiff? Towards to messy and chaotic? I tend to think of myself as a pretty good housekeeper. But I must say that I was humbled by the rat poop incident and decided that I tended to err on the side of, surprise surprise, messy. I've been cleaning more carefully since that insight.

Mind you, when guests walk into my home they see a balance between tight and loose. My sofas invite you to rest in them and my table is asthetic and comfortable. The floors and surfaces are clean, there are usually fresh flowers and art adorns the walls. Where my shadow lies is in the dark corners. How easy it is to become mindless of things and thoughts which are not right in front of our eyes. It takes someone coming along and throwing the contents of our drawers out into the light for us to see what is unbalanced in us. Exposing our shadow is one place people we find "difficult" are invaluable to us. What I took away with me from this TV insight is not so much about how clean or how messy my home is but how important it is to be honest with myself and willing to grow. When I watched these two moms I admired the way the neat freak embraced change. If we're willing to embrace change it doesn't matter much where we begin, we will move towards the middle. It is the middle way of Buddhism. So practical and simple! But to move towards the middle we need to start by being honest about where we really are. We also need to be willing to not waste a lot of time feeling bad about our state of affairs. After all, we are all human and will continue to err until the last stages of enlightenment. Trying to hide from our own shadow just makes the journey that much harder.

And so, dear reader, I am airing my dirty laundry (and rat poop) before you hoping that it will put you at ease with your excesses. Order is beautiful and natural as long as it doesn't become an addiction. Chaos is normal and wondrous as long as it doesn't revert to mindlessness. What a fine line it is between Chaos and order and how beautifully our homes can illustrate to us just where our consciousness falls between these two extremes.

Jacqueline