Last night’s blog was #1000 in a row. (Woowho.) And whereas my average post takes about two hours to write, last night’s took four. I think it was five in the morning when I finally published it, shared it to social media, and wound down. While writing I told myself I was going to go for a celebratory walk when it was all said and done. However, later I was so tired that I never made it past the end of the driveway. Still, I played some music on my phone and danced under the new moon. Then I came inside, curled up in bed, and promptly began snoring.
This is how I party.
This afternoon I helped my parents clean our house–dust furniture, wash dishes, scrub the bathtub. Honestly, this was the perfect thing. One because it’s easy to let things pile up, and cleaning is a good opportunity to throw this away, put that in its proper place. Two because it was a reminder that life goes on. Just because you’ve had a big milestone (or tragedy) doesn’t mean there isn’t trash to take out. Indeed, these are things I’ve often encouraged (preached) here–getting your relationships in order, taking out your emotional garbage, moving on with your life. I have a friend who’s insistent on taking down their Christmas decorations the day after Christmas. This is the same idea. Like, the holidays are over. What’s next?
Along these lines of moving on, this afternoon in an effort to get some wrinkles out of one of our area rugs, I tried ironing it. Y’all, this was the wrong thing to do, since apparently the rug had some plastic in it and plastic and heat don’t go together. “Crap,” I told Dad, “I just melted this corner like the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ll put the coffee table over it. Besides, it’ll give your mother an excuse to buy a new one.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“Get over it,” he said. “It’s not important.”
Still, I started to self-flagellate. I should have known better and all that. But recently I’ve been asking myself the question, “How long do you want this to last? How long do you want to suffer?” Like, when someone cuts you off in traffic or cheats on you with your best friend, you know that AT SOME POINT you’re going to stop crying about it and start laughing. Even if it’s twenty years from now. (If instead you know that you’re going to be stuck right there in that moment forever–bitter, angry, resentful, and unforgiving for the rest of your life–that’s a problem.) Anyway, my point is that you can decide–I’m going to be upset about this for an afternoon, a week, or a month and then let it go. Getting back to the rug I screwed up today, I decided I’d let it go within the hour.
And I did.
Consequently, although I ruined the rug, or at least one corner of it, it didn’t ruin my day.
My suggestion: try this technique with something small before you try it with something big.
After my dad and I put the coffee table on the melted rug, I started thinking about all the other things in our home that are less than perfect. Like, the wood under the kitchen sink is rotted out because the sink’s been leaking and we just found out about it (we shut the cabinet door so no one will see the damage). The sheetrock in my bathroom has hole in it from where we hung one too many heavy objects on a screw (I positioned a large shelf over the hole). There’s termite damage on one of the baseboards in the sitting room (we put a futon in front of it). Anyway, my point is that things are always falling apart on planet earth–houses, material possessions, relationships, bodies. And whereas I don’t recommend covering all the damage up strictly to maintain appearances (because some things should be repaired or handled directly), I do recommend not getting stuck when things aren’t perfect. I do recommend moving on.
Because if it’s on planet earth–if it’s a material object–it wasn’t DESIGNED to last forever.
Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)
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Getting comfortable in your own skin takes time.
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