So sorry to hear about your father. I appreciate these questions, which make me think about the extent to which the ordering process used to feel fairly organic for me. There was a kind of fluid virtuosity to the ongoing calculation that allowed me to use everything in the fridge before it expired, or the protocols that I used to organize my research processes, etc. These were systems that made the mundane feel beautiful, like a harmonious and supportive low-friction world that I constructed as I moved through it. I guess it felt like a kind of mastery, albeit an embedded one. I think I've been feeling the loss of this organically evolving order pretty intensely for the past few years. This is in part covid, but also health issues that required me to take up a restricted diet, which is much more ordered than before, but ironically makes me feel exhausted, unable to tap into my own mundane creativity, rather than free. This is perhaps a response to your last question then: order used to feel effortless, like breathing, and now it feels labored, and I don't know that I'll ever get back to feeling free. The obvious answer is that I might renaturalize a new order through practice, but what you're wanting is the opposite: to denaturalize and consciously shift the rules.
I am so sorry that your dad and you and your family are going through this. Please take care of yourself, even as you take care of your family. Order for me feels like an effortless, clean, easy routine without hiccups (like knocking things over, dropping things, or my sweatpants getting inadvertently and unknowingly caught on my kitchen drawer pulls. For real, that last example embodies what the opposite of order feels like for me.) I love it when the things I use on a daily basis are ordered: kitchen and bathroom supplies and cabinets. By order I mean that everything I use is clearly visible with space around it, making it easy to grab and do my thing. It also means that I do not have extra “stuff” that I do not use. I regularly (twice a year at least) go through and declutter often used spaces, throwing away or giving away things I don’t use. The one space in my life that I have not been able to order since my divorce is my garage. My ex backed his car out and just left everything else in the garage, 20 years of life lived together. (I’ve been able to “order” everything in the house as he just up and left all that too.) But for some reason the garage is overwhelming. It is filled with old camping gear, old baby furniture, old beach gear…remnants of a life he just backed out of. When I go in there (to grab the odd supply of to attempt to clear it) I end up sitting in an old high back chair we have in there, and I sob. I just cry….still to this day…3 years after he backed out. He was a bit of a hoarder and liked a lot of “stuff” around him “in case he needed it.” Quite the opposite of me, and chaotic, now that I think about it. I have this dream of selling my too large home (with still too much stuff) when my kid graduates and buying a tiny house somewhere near the water…with only the things I need and use: 5 mugs, a few utensils, two towels, etc…. That kind of order, that kind of clean slate, that feels like ease, freedom, simplicity. I dream of order I suppose. The opposite of order for me is chaos, clutter, too much “stuff.” When the stuff gets in the way of just living and going about my day with ease…that feels like chaos. If I am being honest: order also includes a lot less people around me, and a lot more open space. Sigh….you have me dreaming of a new life. My plan until I get there is to do a bit of traveling and to stay in tiny houses as I travel, to get a taste of that order and simplicity (and perhaps some ideas.) Thanks for asking these questions. Please know I am thinking about you and your family.
For me, there's something liberating about knowing, or at least believing, that there is an implicit order in how I approach the big question, What To Do Next? Order, for me, is about chronology. First you've got to put on your shirt and then you have to put on your deodorant, otherwise you get deodorant on your shirt and that's very disorderly. I'm constantly making to-do lists (which is a striving toward order I really enjoy), but I rarely do any of the things on the list. Sometimes I feel bad. Why make the list and not do the things? Sometimes I think making the list is fruitful, even if I am bad and don't do the things. But another corner of my brain believes that the most important to-do list is the one I feel spontaneously. The sense I get of, "Oh, I want to do this now." Like, I could have put responding to this post on a to-do list and never have gotten to it. But I had a sudden urge to just do it now, even though there are probably a lot of other technically more pressing issues I could attend to. But maybe my heart knows exactly what is most important to attend to, and the part of me that makes the list is just behind.
I would be most scared to forget my kin-relations. I forget the date frequently. I make up multiple names and identities. Forgetting much of my past might be liberating. But forgetting people feels like losing love, somehow.
Order, to me, is associated with 'tidy' which is associated with 'like goes with like' and 'everything in its place.' I struggle with keeping things in order because the categories aren't clear. Order is possibly more of a feeling than a fact?
Hi Natalia, I'm sorry to hear about your father. I hope his recovery is swift. Thank you for these questions. These are the things I'd like to have in order: 1. My spotify playlist, 2. My digital photos, 3. My hard drive, 4. My dropbox, 5. My Google Drive. - I've taken the time to organize all of these at different times over the last few years, but they quickly fall out of order. Remembering -- in a felt sense kind of way - what a pain in the arse it was to put those things in order (particularly the time it took) is enough to leave me unmotivated to prioritize this effort again. There is a precision one has to live as to keep oneself in order and I don't enjoy living that way. I notice, though, if I'm around someone whose life is super disordered I have a tendency to want to help them clean it up. Maybe I like some balance. Regarding where I do have order - one of my favorite things to do is plan my learning for the year. I make a list of all the ways in which I desire to grow, teachers I'd like to study with, programs I'd like to take, current interests and passions and then I put together a month by month list of relevant events/learning opportunities. The list is huge and I could never do everything on the list (it also grows throughout the year) but I really enjoy this kind of ordering. I'm in the middle of this process now. The opposite of order might be freedom to be spontaneous (though I can also see how that freedom is available within order). For some reason Don Miguel Ruiz is coming to mind. I recall in his book The Four Agreements that he mentions living your life in such a way - so impeccably -- that if you were given the opportunity of a lifetime that you'd be able to say yes instantly (paraphrasing here). I think about this a lot. What kind of order does this require? - Kim W
Pondering your post, I remembered the Things Organized Neatly tumblr and instagram. To my surprise, when I looked at the IG page, I was low-key offended at some of the images. THEY ARE NOT ORGANIZED NEATLY. https://www.instagram.com/thingsorganizedneatly/?hl=en
So sorry to hear about your father. I appreciate these questions, which make me think about the extent to which the ordering process used to feel fairly organic for me. There was a kind of fluid virtuosity to the ongoing calculation that allowed me to use everything in the fridge before it expired, or the protocols that I used to organize my research processes, etc. These were systems that made the mundane feel beautiful, like a harmonious and supportive low-friction world that I constructed as I moved through it. I guess it felt like a kind of mastery, albeit an embedded one. I think I've been feeling the loss of this organically evolving order pretty intensely for the past few years. This is in part covid, but also health issues that required me to take up a restricted diet, which is much more ordered than before, but ironically makes me feel exhausted, unable to tap into my own mundane creativity, rather than free. This is perhaps a response to your last question then: order used to feel effortless, like breathing, and now it feels labored, and I don't know that I'll ever get back to feeling free. The obvious answer is that I might renaturalize a new order through practice, but what you're wanting is the opposite: to denaturalize and consciously shift the rules.
I am so sorry that your dad and you and your family are going through this. Please take care of yourself, even as you take care of your family. Order for me feels like an effortless, clean, easy routine without hiccups (like knocking things over, dropping things, or my sweatpants getting inadvertently and unknowingly caught on my kitchen drawer pulls. For real, that last example embodies what the opposite of order feels like for me.) I love it when the things I use on a daily basis are ordered: kitchen and bathroom supplies and cabinets. By order I mean that everything I use is clearly visible with space around it, making it easy to grab and do my thing. It also means that I do not have extra “stuff” that I do not use. I regularly (twice a year at least) go through and declutter often used spaces, throwing away or giving away things I don’t use. The one space in my life that I have not been able to order since my divorce is my garage. My ex backed his car out and just left everything else in the garage, 20 years of life lived together. (I’ve been able to “order” everything in the house as he just up and left all that too.) But for some reason the garage is overwhelming. It is filled with old camping gear, old baby furniture, old beach gear…remnants of a life he just backed out of. When I go in there (to grab the odd supply of to attempt to clear it) I end up sitting in an old high back chair we have in there, and I sob. I just cry….still to this day…3 years after he backed out. He was a bit of a hoarder and liked a lot of “stuff” around him “in case he needed it.” Quite the opposite of me, and chaotic, now that I think about it. I have this dream of selling my too large home (with still too much stuff) when my kid graduates and buying a tiny house somewhere near the water…with only the things I need and use: 5 mugs, a few utensils, two towels, etc…. That kind of order, that kind of clean slate, that feels like ease, freedom, simplicity. I dream of order I suppose. The opposite of order for me is chaos, clutter, too much “stuff.” When the stuff gets in the way of just living and going about my day with ease…that feels like chaos. If I am being honest: order also includes a lot less people around me, and a lot more open space. Sigh….you have me dreaming of a new life. My plan until I get there is to do a bit of traveling and to stay in tiny houses as I travel, to get a taste of that order and simplicity (and perhaps some ideas.) Thanks for asking these questions. Please know I am thinking about you and your family.
For me, there's something liberating about knowing, or at least believing, that there is an implicit order in how I approach the big question, What To Do Next? Order, for me, is about chronology. First you've got to put on your shirt and then you have to put on your deodorant, otherwise you get deodorant on your shirt and that's very disorderly. I'm constantly making to-do lists (which is a striving toward order I really enjoy), but I rarely do any of the things on the list. Sometimes I feel bad. Why make the list and not do the things? Sometimes I think making the list is fruitful, even if I am bad and don't do the things. But another corner of my brain believes that the most important to-do list is the one I feel spontaneously. The sense I get of, "Oh, I want to do this now." Like, I could have put responding to this post on a to-do list and never have gotten to it. But I had a sudden urge to just do it now, even though there are probably a lot of other technically more pressing issues I could attend to. But maybe my heart knows exactly what is most important to attend to, and the part of me that makes the list is just behind.
I would be most scared to forget my kin-relations. I forget the date frequently. I make up multiple names and identities. Forgetting much of my past might be liberating. But forgetting people feels like losing love, somehow.
Order, to me, is associated with 'tidy' which is associated with 'like goes with like' and 'everything in its place.' I struggle with keeping things in order because the categories aren't clear. Order is possibly more of a feeling than a fact?
Hi Natalia, I'm sorry to hear about your father. I hope his recovery is swift. Thank you for these questions. These are the things I'd like to have in order: 1. My spotify playlist, 2. My digital photos, 3. My hard drive, 4. My dropbox, 5. My Google Drive. - I've taken the time to organize all of these at different times over the last few years, but they quickly fall out of order. Remembering -- in a felt sense kind of way - what a pain in the arse it was to put those things in order (particularly the time it took) is enough to leave me unmotivated to prioritize this effort again. There is a precision one has to live as to keep oneself in order and I don't enjoy living that way. I notice, though, if I'm around someone whose life is super disordered I have a tendency to want to help them clean it up. Maybe I like some balance. Regarding where I do have order - one of my favorite things to do is plan my learning for the year. I make a list of all the ways in which I desire to grow, teachers I'd like to study with, programs I'd like to take, current interests and passions and then I put together a month by month list of relevant events/learning opportunities. The list is huge and I could never do everything on the list (it also grows throughout the year) but I really enjoy this kind of ordering. I'm in the middle of this process now. The opposite of order might be freedom to be spontaneous (though I can also see how that freedom is available within order). For some reason Don Miguel Ruiz is coming to mind. I recall in his book The Four Agreements that he mentions living your life in such a way - so impeccably -- that if you were given the opportunity of a lifetime that you'd be able to say yes instantly (paraphrasing here). I think about this a lot. What kind of order does this require? - Kim W
Pondering your post, I remembered the Things Organized Neatly tumblr and instagram. To my surprise, when I looked at the IG page, I was low-key offended at some of the images. THEY ARE NOT ORGANIZED NEATLY. https://www.instagram.com/thingsorganizedneatly/?hl=en