My wife and I have just redesigned our back room, the one that serves as office, TV lounge, library, exercise center, and guest bedroom. It’s not a big room, just an awfully useful one, and given all the uses to which it is put, it was clear we needed to have a neater, more efficient floor plan.
In preparation for the new look, we took out the wall shelves, desks and file cabinets, books, magazines, TV, wiring, and everything that was going to be replaced and piled them (temporarily) in the living room. And that, in short, is the problem. Now, four weeks later, although the back room looks great, with the new desks for our twin computers, book shelves, and entertainment center, not to mention a placement of the convertible sofa that allows visiting dignitaries to calmly get into and out of bed without climbing over coffee tables and/or a Health Rider, the living room still looks like hell.
Even after deep sixing the obvious trash, it is proving to be much harder to decide what old things we are willing to get rid of than it was to determine what new things we needed. File cabinets that almost close completely, used wall shelves (see above), souvenir postcards from long ago vacations, pictures of people we think we recognize, ten year old Consumer’s Reports, old business cards, wires and cables of all shapes and sizes, books we will never read again, ball point pens that still work, loose leaf binders, unused manilla folders, and empty bags just perfect for putting things into when you don’t know where to put them.
And I can’t help wondering if this might not be a decent analogy for the human race. As we make a dent in the twenty-first century and look forward to all the places we could go and the things we might do, how much are we still holding onto that we no longer need? What thoughts, ideas, prejudices, and policies are part of our very definition of who we are only because we are afraid or unwilling to let them go and find out who we are without them? Property rights from generations long gone that keep some people and some nations poor while other people and other nations reap the rewards of nature’s bounty. Sexual stereotypes and gender biases that at best allow workplace discrimination and at worst remove the human rights and freedom of being from half the population. Hatreds that go back thousands of years. Who cares anymore whose ancestors were the first to throw the stone or shoot the arrow?
A friend of mine who believes strongly in the efficacy of the Universe says you have to get rid of unnecessary “stuff” if you want good things to come to you. “You have to make room”, she says, “if you want to progress.” Will humankind hundreds of years from now still be feuding and killing each other over how one chooses to worship… or not? Will some still have more than they need while others still starve? Will one’s gender or skin color still determine one’s rights and freedoms? And if so, will we be taking this baggage with us as we enter space and the untapped realms beyond the bounds of Earth?
I, for one, hope not. And I also hope we can shed this chaff more easily than my wife and I can return our living room to its former state. It’s easy to say what others should do. Unfortunately, cleaning up begins at home.
peace…………….ag
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