Purging

Have had a post percolating around in my brain for the last several days, so I thought I should make space for an update.  Dad seems OK over the phone but is saying he knows he needs somebody with him.  Won't be long before we are there.  Busy times at my current house.  Packing, packing, packing.  And trying to cook ALL THE THINGS in my freezer.  And try to be at peace with the resulting chaos that happens when I am not tidying up everything else (see photo lol). And reducing.  Ah, getting rid of stuff – it is not easy for this Cancer who tends to put emotional attachments on things, and I have never been pushed to purge this deeply before.  In my past moves, I haven’t had to worry about space and just packed until I was done.  Now I am putting most of my life into a 10 x 15 box, so the process has begun of deciding what to let go of.  One of those things is going to be my desk.  I haven’t cleaned it out in quite some time - I tend to just pack up what is in the cubbies and leave the drawers as they are.  Not this time….

I have gone through this stuff at some point in the past and obviously decided to keep what I still have, but this time felt really different.  It isn’t just because I am trying to crunch space.  I was also shocked to find out how much stuff I plain old don’t have emotional attachments to anymore and fascinated by how that lack represented a tangible example of the paradigm shift I have been undergoing ever since discovering Unconditional Parenting and unschooling. So many of my old papers were nothing more than a bunch of academic back patting or evidence of making the popularity cut.  Now that I see so much of what happens in public schools as damaging for children, much of this stuff feels more like an embarrassment than a keepsake.

Some examples:

Program for the Pre-Prom Fashion Show – Really?  So glad I was deemed pretty enough and popular enough to participate. Ugh.

Newspaper clipping naming me as one of the high scorers on the PSAT – Great, I learned how to cram for a test with an exact set of parameters, and more importantly, I was recognized for it and my mom had something to show our extended family.

Program from the Ephebian Ceremony – This one is my favorite because I had to actually apply for it but could have cared less.  It was just supposed to look good on college applications and hey, it gets your picture in the newspaper.  More stuff for my mom to frame.  And it might as well be the teacher version of a popularity contest.

Why am I being so hard on that ex overachiever that was me?  I do have empathy for the old me.  She was just doing what she was raised to do in our society that seems hell bent on raising Praise Junkies.  I am just glad I am not that person anymore.  Most people go through their lives never thinking much about how manipulative common parenting practices and most schools are, but savvy businesses have been realizing for some time how problematic this type of mindset is.  In my life, I am thankful for the many parenting educators, bloggers and authors of books who have opened my mind to seeing things a different way.

But shouldn’t I cherish these things as part of my memories and be proud of my achievements?  Many things in my life have been forgotten while those memories are still there, so I don’t think they are in much danger, and if they have to leave at some point (like what I am watching happen to my father) to make way for keeping other things, I would rather remember how it felt to run barefoot through the forest in Yosemite and be tumbled in the Carpinteria waves while bodysurfing, or the first steps of my children and the first hug with my husband.  And as far as “achievements” go, I am reminded of something Krishnamurti said:

In this example, I see school as the sick society, so my “good grades” feel pretty meaningless to me at this point.  I was very good at figuring out how teachers test, what they were looking for and how to memorize lots of material over short times.  I rarely had any true interest in the subjects or remembered much afterwards.  There were exceptions for me, mainly in literature and science, but for the most part, I became a master crammer.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not down on education, and I think there are great teachers out there who really care about their students as well as some innovative schools trying out new things, but for the most part, I feel the public school system, at least in the US, has inherent flaws.  Grading systems, mandatory testing, reward programs, poor student to teacher ratios and dividing children into same age classrooms only scratch the surface of some of the issues I see as problematic. 

But this isn’t an essay about what I think is wrong with schools.  I am writing this post to process how much I have changed, how much I have let go of the expectation to be measured, the drive to do well on some standardized scale and the desire to be recognized for it.  I am sure there is plenty of that stuff still internalized in me.  My ego is alive and well lol, but these days I am trying to keep my focus on doing things I truly enjoy and following my interests where they will lead.  I certainly don’t want to be measured for it or be compared to how well somebody else is doing the same things.  And if somebody happens to notice something I do and appreciate it, that’s awesome, but I don’t want that to be the reason I make choices in my life. 

I love the ideas of thinking about what brings you joy and what supports your higher self when going through clutter.   I thought this quotation captured a good part of the process:

I would rephrase this saying with “hands and head”.  Might not flow as well, but both are true.  Clutter can be mental as well as physical.  I hope to be always changing and looking for ways to walk more in alignment with my higher self, learning from the past and reaching for the future.  So, to rephrase my vision with positive language instead of “don’t”s…

I want to do what brings me joy for no other reason.

I want to follow my joy without caring if I am doing it “right” or even “well” by somebody else’s standards.

I want to follow my joy without caring if I am doing it better than anybody else.

I want to follow my joy not caring if anybody notices.

I was actually thinking about these things not long ago as I took my first art lesson, wondering if I would ever share my art with the world, wondering if I would care if it got criticized, wondering if I would hope it spoke to people.  I think I would be happy to know people related to it, but at the same time, I don’t want to *try* to be relatable.  I think the moment one steps away from any of the above “wants” is the moment one begins to deviate from authentic artistic expression.  And I think this can be applied to just about anything.

Life is art.  I want to create mine as authentically as possible.  This is what getting rid of clutter has taught me today.