Day 285 of 365 - Creating Space

There is something about summer time that feels spacious.  Maybe it has to do with the outdoors being more welcoming, or windows being open with refreshing breezes blowing through, at least on cooler days.  Even though, with hot, sultry days, we might not be moving too energetically in a physical way, there is also a sense of more movement in summer.  Maybe it has to do with the sheer volume of natural change that occurs in this season.  For example, the mature bare trees which I wrote about just a few months ago, are so lush and full that I cannot see through them now.

In any case, warm, breezy days conjure up in me a visual of relaxing on a lounge chair, daydreaming.  For at least brief periods, I can empty my mind, imagining the expansiveness of a quiet beach on a large waterfront.  It is calming and restorative.  There is nowhere to be, nothing to do, just rest, as referred to in yesterday's post, like that pebble sitting on a riverbed.  Lovely.  Having even brief experiences such as that can help me get out of habitual ruts.  It clears space in my mind, which for me, is the most cluttered place of all.

Creating physical space, even in a small way, can also jog me out of a sense of confinement or limitation.  Even though this year's spring cleaning is most likely to be fall cleaning, I'm feeling the urge to do some smaller scale tidying, like going through one drawer or one box, to see what can be organized or cleared out.  Fortunately, my itch will be scratched later this week, indirectly, when I go to help a friend with a storage room in her house.

So, what is it that I'm looking to find by creating space, either physically or in my imagination?  I think it's a sense of freedom;  freedom from the old stuff that no longer serves a purpose in my life, and freedom to explore something different.

To be sure, when we get past the ever so pleasant daydreaming stage, to the point of acting on those dreams, resistance will arise.  For me, this is often in the form of  'I should' or 'I shouldn't' get rid of or do, this or that, in case it upsets somebody.  Thankfully, the necessity of living in a physically smaller space has frequently tipped the balance on that one.  Now, in most cases, I make arbitrary decisions about what stays and goes, unless it is the personal property of a family member.

However, despite the amount of clearing of material goods I have done in the last several years, I can still be stopped short.   A few days ago, I searched around for a bit for a file of notes from an online course that I had taken.  When they were not in the easily accessible places, I decided they must have been relegated to a box in a closet.  But, when I opened that closet and saw the stacked boxes, I just thought 'nope, not gonna do it' and shut that door.  It wasn't an urgent enough need to motivate me to haul out and dig through several boxes.

I won't forget about that closet though, and I will get back to it, eventually.  I think the way to gently ease into it, especially in the summer, is to go my other route of one short term task at a time.

My ultimate space creating dream is to simplify and organize to the degree that I know where everything is, and that the majority of our belongings serve a functional purpose, whether that be for our daily living needs or for aesthetic or sentimental reasons.

For today though, it's just those breezes blowing through the cluttered cobwebs of my mind, creating a little nook of free space in there.