It might be odd to start a series so soon. But I realized that if I am going to set the The Way of Baleine off right, Spring Cleaning is essential. I know Spring Cleaning may sound a little lame, a little old, a little cliche, but it will work here.
Spring Cleaning is not just the keep things tidy kind of clean. It is the deep, heavy, get down on your knee’s kind of clean. We do it to get rid of the winter. We do it to clear out the salt, the grit and the stale air that settles in when we have been closed up for so long.
We do it to make room to prepare for what is coming.
Because life is changed by the chores. The small, quiet, repetitive ones. I am going to stick with this theme for the next few posts so that when the Spring Cleaning is done, our inner voice will be a little louder and a little clearer.
So, let’s start with some Spring Cleaning.
The last post had a lot of questions and no answers. Writing this one without repeating that pattern is difficult. Sometimes the best way to understand something complex is to think about it while doing something simple.
It does not get any simpler than sweeping the floor.
Small, deliberate steps.
Dusting, vacuuming, polishing, can come later. Today, we sweep.
Sweep the noise to the middle of the room.
“Noise” is a word we hear constantly. When we hear it, we intantly go to social media. That is too easy. Yes, it is loud, and the loudest. But if we only blame the phone, we miss everything else cluttering the room. We think that turning off the phone means the house is swept.
It is not.
There is so much more to clean.
The voice of a boss from twenty years ago. We are sweeping that into the pile.
Looking at your life against a stranger. That goes in the dustbin too.
The cringey memory from fifteen years. It is dead and gone, and today is the day we finally stop walking on it.
The “What-Ifs” about things that never even happened. You know where that goes.
The “rules” you follow because you have always followed them. Into the pile.
The feeling that you are behind in a race. We ae sweeping that up too.
The old grudges you still carry. Into the dustbin.
And on and on it goes.
There is just so much noise.
So today, we are not doing anything big. We are just sweeping.
Sweeping up the old voices. Sweeping up the “shoulds.” Sweeping up the things from years ago that still make our jaw tighten.
Swept into a pile in the middle of the room.
Sweep it into a dustbin.
Do not empty the dustbin yet.
Why?
Because if we try to throw it all out on day one, we will just drop the bin and the dust will fly everywhere again. We will be right back where we started, sweeping.
So we will just leave the dustbin by the door.
It is still in the house, but we are not walking on it anymore. It is not sticking to our feet. It is contained. It is waiting. We know exactly what it is, and better still, where it is.
Sitting by the door, on its way out.
Leave it there.
The floor is swept. And as we swept, we noticed what we were sweeping, and we named it.
That is enough for today.
The Way of Baleine.
The best way to listen is to stop talking.
This is today’s track.
