'Til I grew up, now I blew up, it makes you sick to your stomach, doesn't it?"
- Eminem, Cleanin' Out My Closet, 2002
Don't really know when it exactly began (the mess appear, the decluttering started), but it felt like a homecoming.
'Exactly' may be a wrong word. We cant really pinpoint exactly anything when we are not aware. While I do want to feel that I am a logical sentient being that is in control and aware of every single thing that is going on in my brain and with my body, the fact is I don't. Our brain just don't work this way[1]. Not sure if this is assuring or unnerving.
Take for example a creeper crawler landed ever so gently on your back and you don't know it. Does it exist? Yes. But are you aware? No. In your reality it does not exist yet until someone said :" Hey, don't move. There's something on your back" with their eyes wide open, staring and freezing you to a halt in fear.
So, when does this incident exactly happened? It depends if you are looking from the creepy crawler point of view, your friend point of view or your own point of view.
And what if no one notices and it simply crawled along as gently as it come? Does it exist?
A philosophical approach will answer both Yes and No.
Yes because it did happen. That's a fact.
No because no one was there to perceive what is a creepy crawler in the first place.
So when did I start to have creepy crawlers living in my closet and when did I start to clean them out? I don't know.
Before I get suck into an endless cycle of conundrum, let's go with what I do know. In terms of physicality, I started KonMari my stuff around late last year. (Notice I use 'my stuff' instead of 'my room' because my stuff was all over the whole house)
Know about the famous Mari Kondo via Netflix more than 2 years ago. Binge-watched the whole series and started folding my clothes so that it stands on its side. Spark Joy she said. But the spark remains a spark. The joy wasn't permanent. The feeling of something missing, of not enough was still there, permanent.
So why try something that didn't work for me 2 years ago again? Well, the manga version of Mari Kondo book came out. It was an easy 1hour read with a simple story line and cute drawings. As easy and simple a book it was, the wisdom it held was deep.
Indeed it was life-changing. Maybe the time was right as the saying goes : when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Maybe its serendipity. Maybe I already changing my life due to other catalyst and only aware about it now. Or maybe, there is no maybe. It just happened that I picked this up randomly, read through it in one sitting and realized that it makes sense. What the Netflix series showed is only the surface: the techniques, the skills, the tools. But what the book (manga) taught was the philosophy behind them: the purpose, the reason, the 'truth' about tidying (and its opposite: clutter).
And so, my journey of unpacking begins. The steps is easy:
1) Decide the type of lifestyle I want.
2) Discard things that don't spark joy for me.
3) Store item that spark joy properly, give them a proper 'home'
Note: Start with easy things like Clothes> Books > Papers and Small items > Hobby items > Sentimental so that my spark joy detector become strong enough to handle emotional stuff.
Simple ya? Ha. Ha. Ha.
I can honestly tell you that in the whole wardrobe that I have accumulated over the past 10years, there is only one single piece of item that truly spark joy for me. ONE. It's not that my standard for spark joy was way too high. On the contrary, my tolerance for 'meh' ,'ok', 'not bad' and 'not me but why not' is just way too high. I call all these the "Just Because" (which warrant a separate post all by itself.)
Not to mention discarding things was never easy, at least for me. I'm a hoarder who keeps her primary school story books until now (20yrs+) and eat every scrap of food even though I'm so full I want to puke.
"In the end, people are unable to discard things either because they are attached to the past or afraid of the future...And thus, we can't see what we need, what will satisfy us, and what we are really seeking."
When truly dive in, I realized that what I was tidying was not so much my stuff but my soul. As within, so without.
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Footnotes
[1] "An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves. The notice that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience ,but it is true: you know far less about yourself than you feel you do." - Daniel Kanehman, Thinking Fast and slow, 2011
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