Shameful Spring Cleaning Confessional, with of course, a metaphor

by Lisa Olson

Once every year or so, usually around this time, I get the urge to clean.

When it comes, I must go with it, in a rare and thus far, undocumented manic cleaning frenzy, for who knows when it will come again. My annual cleaning urge showed up this weekend. My focus: the bedroom.

I didn't know dust could grow so thick. I marveled in awe, shock and wonder at the number of dusting cloths I defiled. I let go of at least a dozen styling products and body sprays and lotions that I don't use. I dusted off the thick layer of dust that had accumulated on things I forgot I had.

Cleaning out the entertainment center in the corner of our room, I found a couple of remote controls of TVs or VCRs or GKWs (God Knows What) we had gotten rid of years ago. The layer of dust was so thick on these remotes, they looked like a relics from the volcano of Pompeii. Frankly, it was disgusting, embarrassing. I have to stop living like this, I thought.

I'm doing this prosperity work and have become so aware, so alert of all the messages I am communicating to the universe, and the messages being communicated to me, and I read this message loud and clear: how can you prosper if you don't even care for what you have?

After giving myself a hearty self-flogging, I vowed to change my dusty ways. The entertainment center also held another message from the universe, custom-made for me, but probably... pardon the pun... universal.

In the entertainment center were not one, but two portable CD players that no longer worked, that haven't worked, in a long time. One was missing a cord and a battery cover. One hadn't been used since the mid-90s of last century (I knew this by the Blaque CD I found inside it).

Why am I holding onto things that do not work? Well... Because they're CD players! It seems wrong, criminal, almost, to throw them away. Wake up: They do not work.

My husband Johnny and I spent a couple minutes debating: what to do, what to do with these broken, outdated, unnecessary pieces of electronics?

But the bigger question that loomed was: why the hell do we hold onto broken things?

Do we imagine someday taking them in, to the CD player repair place? Do we imagine that someday we will become knowledgeable enough in electronics repair to fix them ourselves? Do we think someone, someday will buy two broken CD players, at that magical garage sale that, let's be honest, we will never have? And of course, I, in my precise and sometimes annoying way of making everything mean something else (because it does), asked myself, and have been asking since: what message am I sending out there, when I hang on to broken things?

So, after coming to our senses and being honest with ourselves, we let CD players go, vowing out loud, to whoever was listening, that we will no longer hang on to what does not serve us.

It felt good, like something opening up inside of us. We wondered what were we afraid of by letting these CD players go.

What are we ever afraid of, really, by letting anything go?

I think what we are most afraid of is emptiness.

The space that was created on the shelves when the CD players and other useless things went away feels new and unfamiliar. Our entertainment center actually has empty spaces now. My first instinct of course was to fill them, quickly. I did, a little bit with a couple of books that will never get read (that's another blog).

But mostly I just let the new emptiness be, and marveled at the beauty of space and the metaphor pulsing within this experience: there is nothing to fear about the emptiness that shows up when we let go of what no longer works. It's strange, and unfamiliar, yes. But it will not swallow us.

When we create the space, the necessary openness required for us to be ready, available for something new, something more beautiful, more functional, more important can finally take its place. Or not. Maybe we just allow that space to be, and find that we breathe easier, once the dusty old broken things are gone.

I'm done holding onto broken things. I'm ready to release all that doesn't serve me. Ya hear that, Universe? But mostly, I'm looking forward to the space that opens up when I let go.

(c)2009 LisaOhhh