What's Lost Is Sometimes Found

I have lost many things in my life - my father, friendship, one glove, a loving man, my lavender comb, several teeth (don't worry, they were baby teeth) - and some things lost cannot be found again. Certain losses are of one-of-a-kind treasures, like my father, whose humor and affection and funny quirks live on in my mind and sometimes in my dreams, where he comes to visit me.

The friendships that I've lost were perhaps destined to only last a certain amount of time, until we moved on to other stages of our lives. The glove was easily replaced. The comb I'm still looking for, hoping.

In a cluttered house, it can be easy to lose something because of all the visual noise distracting you from what you are looking for. In an earlier post I included a photo of my living room in a state of disarray. One evening this week my son, Mark, told me he had four friends coming over and he wanted to clean up the living room so they could hang out there.

I quickly helped him clear the room of anything that didn't belong in it, and put those items in my bedroom. It was so easy to do that I wondered why I had been procrastinating. (See the new photo.) Since I then had to clean up my bedroom, I packed up things to get rid of and put them in my car, to disperse the next day.

Agonizing over the best way to dispose of something trips me up when I work on decluttering. I hesitate to throw something away in the trash, as there is no "away"; things simply get buried in the ground or piled in a heap.

So I need to make better decisions about what I acquire in life, for several reasons. First of all, I want to acquire things of value to me, not just get something because it's free, or easy to get, or available. Then I want to make sure I'm not holding onto things I don't want or need, things that do not serve me well or are not good for me.

Having removed the clutter that keeps me from seeing things clearly, I can concentrate on keeping those things of value, which means I am less likely to lose something important to me. There will always be loss, but I can do more to prevent the kind of losses that come from something being hidden from my sight.

This theory of clutter, loss, and taking care of things that matter extends to more than material goods. Time spent on busywork can be clutter, which causes the loss of time that could be spent on meaningful pursuits. Worry is mental clutter that keeps one's thoughts from setting tangible goals that could help transcend the worry and instead bring empowerment.

When someone comes into your life who is clearly good for you, it sometimes happens that you let clutter thoughts intrude, which discount the good by picking out the negatives and holding them up to the light at every opportunity. These distracting thoughts are what Richard Carlson wrote about in the entry "Stop Rehearsing Unhappiness" in his book (with Kristine Carlson), "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff in Love".

In all clutter, there is perhaps an insulating factor:   If my home is cluttered, I won't have to deal with people coming over to visit and highlighting my social awkwardness. If my mind is cluttered, I can put off setting goals because it's possible I might fail at them, so the mental clutter keeps me too busy to even start. If my clutter thoughts keep me from truly appreciating someone who loves me, I can shield myself from the vulnerability of really trusting a person who could cause me pain if they decided to stop loving me.

Humans are adept at surviving in the face of many hazards, but surviving is not the same as thriving. To thrive is to fully live and take risks that could bring joyful rewards. They key is sorting out the clutter that prevents us from taking those risks.

And risking, although scary and sometimes dangerous, may lead us to find some things that were lost. My heart says this alone is worth taking the chance.