Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Unnecessary Things

Last night I helped LeeAnn edit an essay for school. I was reminded by the core message in Strunk & White's immortal style guide, Elements of Style. "Eliminate unnecessary words. I love words and it's difficult for me to eliminate them. And as I have mentioned in previous posts I have become enamored with a blog titled Zenhabits-Simple Productivity. The postings on this web log have helped me to identify more things in my life that would improve it--if they were eliminated.
Case in point: I believe that if I were able to catalog my entire waking adult life I would find that I've spent 5% of my time looking for things I need or want behind and under things I don't need and really don't want. Want proof? Here's my garage.


I like this web log so well I bought the author's print book: Zen To Done. (I got mine at Amazon.) In this appropriately brief book, I was treated to the notion that even too much food, and the fat it turns to, can be considered clutter. True enough. I'm a good 30-50 pounds overweight. Carrying that much weight in a backpack up a hill makes most people complain. Me? I carry it, pump blood through it, add another 50 pounds in a real backpack and then climb the hill. Trust me; fat's clutter. (I have a photo of me in a swimsuit on the beach in Antigua that I nearly inserted here. But since there are a couple people who read this I decided not to subject you to that.)
Today I got the coup d'etat to my guiding notion that clutter just happens in people's lives and there really isn't much you can do about it short of turning your whole life upside down. I found an audio copy of a book I read years ago: The Richest Man In Babylon, and I've been listening to it. (Great book. Simple and concise. Libraries have been written by authors who take the simple principles in it and then bloviate for dollars.) Here's the quote that shamed me concerning my tolerance for all things clutter in my life:
"If I set for myself a task, be it ever so trifling, I shall see it through. How else shall I have confidence in myself to do important things?"
I guess if I can't keep my garage clean how can I be expected to change the world? (Lately the world has a bitter need of being changed.) Keeping my hands in my pockets when I pass the candy dish has got to be counted a "trifling task" and so counts as another indictment.

The best parts of my life are at least partially buried in "unnecessary things".

Got to work on that.






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It's not about skiing: It's about what I learned when I learned to ski.

You can't have fun skiing if you always lean uphill towards the seeming security of the uphill slope: Leaning up is natural for most of us though: after all, if you fall uphill, you don't have as far to go before you hit.
Trouble is when you ski like that, you spend a lot of time in the snow. Your center of balance is all out of whack, your skis slide out from under you and down you go. It's no fun.
If you want to zoom down the slopes free and easy you have to commit to the fall line, get your "nose over your toes" and risk tumbling head over heels once in a while in a glorious confusion of arms and legs and skis. But once you make the commitment: Surprise! You hardly ever fall and you can ski!
I don't ski much any more but life is like that too. You have to commit and risk a crash if you really want to live a full life.
This web log is a chronicle of the ways I find myself leaning up into the hill, and what happens when I catch myself doing it, and then lean forward instead.

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