Life is Too Short to Scrub

I never scrub. If there’s dried on/baked on muck on a pan I let it soak first. I wonder what else needs soaking in my life. Could I put some troublesome problems on hold? Would they get easier? What is the equivalent of soaking a set-in-stone habit? Is there any virtue in putting some things off for a more propitious time?

I have a “to do” folder—two actually—one for urgent tasks and one for things I need to “get around to” some day. It’s easy to figure out what goes in the “urgent tasks” folder: bills, insurance claim forms, letters that require a response. It’s harder to figure out what to do with other items: the college scholarship info that I will want to know about in four years when my daughter is old enough to apply for college, or the neat websites that I may want to check out some time, or the articles ripped out of magazines (how to turn my hobby into cash, American-made products I can buy to stimulate the economy, recipes I want to try but need to plug into my Weight Watchers website calculator so I know how many points they are.) My life is full of such tidbits that I can’t let go of but can’t yet deal with—hence the need for a “get around to it” folder. There are some things that are worth hanging onto just in case. Having a place to keep them makes me feel hopeful and organized.

Unfortunately, it invariably takes me so long to get around to the “get around to it” folder, that when I do, half the things in it are past date: concerts that already happened, coupons that are expired, business cards of people I met so long ago they will have no idea who I am. I always feel bad about the missed opportunities in the “get around to it” folder. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing to miss out once in a while. My life is pretty full as it is! Maybe by letting these tasks metaphorically soak I allow a natural selection process to weed out those things that really aren’t important after all. Maybe it is sometimes better to put off until tomorrow what you just can’t get to today. Life is simply to short for scrubbing anything that will get easier if you let it soak a while first.

Life's Eternal Spiral

Years ago I attended a women's spirituality conference where I had an astonishing experience during an exercise in opening ourselves up to the voice of Wisdom (however you define that.) We sat in a large circle, chairs facing inward, with our eyes closed. One by one we took turns circling along the outside and when we felt we had had a "message" for a particular woman, we would whisper it in her ear. I have no idea whether what popped in my head answered any questions for the woman I whispered it to, but it did answer questions I had at the time about what felt like a bout of failure. The message that popped into my head was "Life is a spiral. Don't be afraid to turn back along the way." It still gives me goosebumps. The image of a spiral is a very powerful one and a very feminine one as well. The power of a spiral lies in the fact that though we keep turning back we are never in the exact same place twice. Anyone who has walked a labyrinth as a spiritual practice has experienced this fact in a profound way. As we turn and head back in the direction we just left, our feet are in a new place. So there is both a sense of familiarity and a sense of something completely new.

Life is like that. Every beginning has certain characteristics--hope, fear, anticipation--that it shares with every other beginning though we might be talking about very different experiences. Reaching our thirteenth or eighteenth or fortieth or sixtieth birthday. Going away to college, or saying goodbye to children who are leaving for college. Getting married or getting divorced. Giving birth to or adopting a baby. Beginning a new career or a new phase of the same career. We think of these as very different experiences, yet they are similar too. Each time we experience a new beginning feels as though we are repeating a process we've been through before; beginnings carry an imprint or memory of every other beginning--ours and those of others who have been there before us.

It's been said that every ending is also a beginning. The reverse is true as well. In order for something to begin, something must end. When I married I was keenly aware that I was giving up a certain freedom as well as taking on a great responsibility. The moment I recognized my unborn baby's complete and total dependence on me for life and health was another epiphany. Each of these experiences was full of promise but also of loss, for I would no longer be free to do whatever I liked, someone would be depending on me.

The image of a spiral has come to me many times since that women's conference. It offers comfort when I feel like I'm in a rut. It offers the promise that a new experience I'm frightened of will have something in it I can understand, something familiar. The spiral is nothing more or less than the spiritual experience of our twisting DNA, the spiralling whirl of stars in our galaxy, the very stuff of life.