I’ve been very busy this week, having a big clearout. One of
the perils of living in a small house and being a parent is the sheer amount of
clutter that accumulates very quickly! I must admit, I’m a bit of a magpie,
with an eye for a bargain and a trawler of charity shops, which definitely
doesn’t help! In the past, I’ve also been quite a hoarder, which is something
I’ve had to work on.
I’ve read books on minimalism and come to the conclusion
that it’s only possible if you eat out, create nothing, have no partner and no
kids! But while I’m probably never going to be a minimalist (my book collection
alone sees to that!), I am slowly improving.
One of the things I’ve found really helpful in getting rid
of unnecessary stuff is a secret I’d like to share with you. I call it the Principle
of Flow.
Simply put, everything around us is in a constant state of
flux. We like to think of time as linear, but it isn’t, it’s cyclical. There’s
a reason why clocks have round faces, not square ones. It’s human nature to
want to hold onto things, but that’s not the way the world is. Every day I’m
getting older, my life is changing. Nothing ever stays still.
Our possessions are there to serve us. The purpose of books
is to be read. The purpose of a lovely coat is to be worn. But if my books are
sitting on the shelf no longer being read, they have lost their sense of
purpose and become a dry, dead thing.
If my coat is hanging in my wardrobe
never to be worn, it might just as well not exist. Once my things have lost
their sense of purpose, it’s time for them to move on, and serve somebody else.
No matter how much I once loved them, I have cut off their flow.
At this time of year, parents are waving goodbye to their
children at school gates or watching their bigger children take their first
steps into adulthood as they leave home and go to university. Such partings are
painful. It’s something, if I’m honest, I’m dreading. Yet, even now, I’m
already preparing my daughter for greater independence, teaching her the skills
she will need to survive without me. I wouldn’t be a good parent if I didn’t.
As creators, we’re an essential part of the flow. Ideas come
to us, sometimes with a whisper, sometimes with a shout, and we have to make
them live – on paper, on screens, or on canvas. If we refuse to do so, perhaps
through fear of not getting it right or worrying about how others might
respond, we kill off the idea at source.
Once I’ve turned the idea into
something concrete, I then have to set it free, to let it make its own way in
the world, independently of myself. The execution of the idea was mine, and
mine alone, but the spark that provoked it exists outside of me, and will go on
beyond me. That’s part of the cycle of life. As creative people, we get our
sparks out there into the world, and if we’ve done our job, they spread and
light a fire of their own.
It’s part of us, too. We’re born, we live, if we’re lucky, eighty
or ninety years or so, but ultimately we die. We don’t get to take our
possessions or our ideas with us. They were never really ours in the first
place. But the sparks we leave behind – the words, the memories, the seeds
we’ve sown and the love we’re shown – those things live on, grow, and multiply
in the lives of others.
Those things are eternal.
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