Hello my joyful friends,
Quite the cliff hanger last week, huh?
I mean, was it really that serious? What was so wrong with trying to “help” someone change for the better. I guess that all depends on whose “better” we are talking about. And, what did all of this have to do with my back anyway? More on that in a bit. All I knew then was I needed to stop trying to change my Mother. I was 57 years old at the time for goodness sake. She was my Mother, the good, the bad, and all the things in the middle. She once told me that people are like presents, some have pretty bows and paper, but all of us eventually end up a little ripped and torn. It was time for me to let her be. To let her be who she was. But, quitting a bad habit isn’t easy. She had helped me “quit” by asking me to leave her alone. But how was I going to “stay quit?”
Sort of by accident, I got busy, really busy. With alcoholics, many have what they call a pink cloud when they first quit drinking, a period of time when everything in the world is beautiful, when they are happy, and seemingly without a care. I suddenly felt that. I felt a surge of energy. I used to come home after work and turn on Netflix for four hours then go to bed.
Coincidentally, (I don’t believe in coincidences by the way) I had watched a series that stars a young Japanese woman who helps families get their homes, and in turn, their lives, in order. The timing was perfect. With all that energy I cleaned my house. I mean, really cleaned. I “tidied up” my bedroom closet, then my other closet, then my dresser, you get the picture. The philosophy was simple. If a piece of clothing, didn’t “spark joy”, I thanked it for serving me well, then got rid of it. I am ashamed to admit that I had a drawer that contained, and I am not kidding, 92 camisole tops. Yes, 92! A rainbow of silly little tops that I picked up at one store after another, $3 bucks, such a deal. Now, that’s insanity. I only had one house, and let me tell you, it was clean like it never had been before. I was in it to win it!
Something about cleaning house, about understanding what sparked joy for me and what didn’t. It had a huge impact on my life, my beliefs, how I was, in the world. But, what now?
Joy
Spark: to set off in a burst of activity
Joyfully Aging 