Around my house I have a saying... I’m fairly confident it was originally something I said to try and cover the horror on my face when something was spilled by a guest in our home (“act normal… act normal… do not freak out... normal people do not freak out about this… just act cool”), but has become something I wholeheartedly believe and downright celebrate.“Every spill is an opportunity…”
And, usually that is completed by “…to clean the floor,” but, since its inception, has also been followed by “…to shampoo the rug,” “…to steam clean the sofa,” and even, “…to cathartically cleanse our bodies of tension and cry.” Amongst others.
This morning, it was an opportunity to clean out the weird parts inside of kitchen drawers that collect dust and grime but I only remember to clean about once every two months or so. My coffee spilled all over me, the counter, and down the cabinets… FOR THE SECOND DAY IN A ROW. The "bonus" for today was that it was in a different area of the kitchen, and thus a different set of nooks and crannies to wipe down. Score.
Yesterday, I had just finished making my breakfast (same thing I’ve eaten every single morning for over two years now… same foods are very real and alive in my world!), and I briefly sat down to enjoy and consume it while I read a delightful article about “addressing negative emotions.” Now, mind you, I clicked on this article thinking it was going to either be, a) some hokey toxic positivity nonsense, or b) something mildly digestible around mindsets, mindfulness, etc. That said, it was included in an email from IDEO, and for anyone that is familiar with this organization, you likely understand why I highly doubted it was option (a)... but honestly, this time of year you never really know. People tend get a little "outside of themselves" at the turn of the new year, and I was preparing myself for that. With how my brain works, it is always best to expect less and be surprised and delighted by anything more. Always.
However, spoiler, it was neither. It was an absolutely practical article written at the end of 2020, actually, about how most people live and exist in their homes and dwellings surrounded by things that spark, trigger, and ignite unnecessary negative emotions like guilt, shame, regret, anxiety, and overwhelmedness (let’s just pretend that is a word, if it’s not). The author wasn’t saying we all just need to be more positive, but actually explained how we set ourselves up to get weighed down with additional burdens - beyond the absolute exhaustion that is day to day life at the moment - with what is contained within the spaces we live, work, eat, and sleep in. And, better yet, offered lists of extremely relatable examples for each negative emotion!
For example, on my nightstand I have two books. They are called “one line a day” books and I got them on the recommendation of a gem of a human and friend. I was supposed to write one line a day in each book about each one of the peppers. Like a modern baby book... it was supposed to be easier, less daunting and less time consuming.
Well, it wasn’t. For me. Daunt it did. And while they are sprinkled with sentences from the first year or two of their lives, all the blank spaces are, without doubt, absolutely saturated and dripping with invisible words guilt. And, every single night when I go to bed I see them. And every single morning when I wake up, I see them. My girls are almost seven. SEVEN. And these books still sit there, haunting me, making me feel inadequate even if for only a split second, but a split second nevertheless. And why?!? It’s absurd just writing this down. I’m certainly not saying I should throw them out, but I am saying that I need to bury them in a box/bin/bag alongside the rest of the most sentimental baby items that will likely simply collect dust for another decade until I finally come to terms with getting rid of it.
And, if that doesn’t resonate, something else will. Like the pile of stuff I have in a room in our basement that I told the peppers or the wifey that I’d “happily fix/glue/sew/mend” and has now sat there for anywhere from 3 months to 3 years just as broken/ripped as it was when I put it there.
Art propped against a wall waiting to be hung? Check.
Stuff I spent way too much money in to get rid of but brings me zero joy, goes untouched, and I hate seeing it? (helloooooo massive DVD collection!) Check.
And so many others.
You might be wondering, like I was a moment ago, how we got six miles down this path about cleansing your space of negative emotions when this all started with coffee talk.
Well. Turns out, yesterday, my coffee tasted like crud.
[side bar: I have an autoimmune issue called eosinophilic esophagitis and if I swallow many, many things, including dairy, white blood cells attack my throat, depositing proteins, and restricting the passageway to the point that I choke on everything, including water (and coffee, somewhat ironically). As such, I make my coffee every morning with a mixture of vanilla syrup and almond milk, and depending on how successful my ratios are, the taste of my coffee can range anywhere from delightfully scrumptious to absolute shit.]
It was awful coffee. It was not serving me. All I had to do was dump it down the drain and try again - the wifey leaves me plenty of coffee in the morning. But instead I was hellbent on drinking this whole cup of blech that made me cringe every single time I sipped.
I know it’s an absurdly small and insignificant example to try and take such a profound lesson from, but seriously. The shit coffee and that damn one-line-a-day book are not helping this absolutely exhausting, arduous, and isolating time in the world.
So much is out of our control, but some is very much within it. I highly recommend the read, How to Cleanse Your Home of Negative Emotions, by Ingrid Fetell Lee.