Cleaning

So it's summer break. I don't have a job, I'm lazy, and I haven't been motivated enough to put together a gathering with my friends (despite my bordom). So what did I decide to do? Clean my room. Yes, I am a fairly messy teen. I can't help it. Still, if truth be told, I actually like things clean (despite the clutter that seems to follow me everywhere).

Today I gathered all the clothes off my floor, put the dirty ones in the hamper, put the clean ones where they're supposed to be, cleaned off my futon, and made my bed. Shockingly enough, that was most of the grime found in my room. While cleaning, however, I was going through a lot of paper material (that's what was all over the futon) and it made me kind of think about life.

I collect just about everything. Why? Because I have a hard time throwing stuff away. Most of my paper clutter goes back years. Luckily today it's only gone back a couple of months but it really made me remember. A lot of my paper had poems on it that I've written over time.

(Something you should know about me and my poems is that the poems reflect my general outlook on life. If a lot of them are centered around myself and are depressing, I'm depressed. If they are on random, cheerful topics, I'm feeling pretty good about life. If they're on some serious subject but the I isn't referring to myself (like when I write a poem from a rapist or an alcoholic's point of view, which, by the way, I have done) then it usually means that I'm just feeling curious about life and what it's like for people other than myself. So when I see poems that I've written in the past, it reminds me a lot about events that were taking place in my life, how I was feeling towards them, and all the memories that are associated with that poem. I see my poems and it brings back wave after wave of memory and emotion. Sometimes I can't re-read poems I wrote a year or two ago because the memories and emotions are too strong and too painful.)

So I'm looking through the poems and going through and I realize just how much junk I have. I look at all the stuff I've accumulated over time and realize just how pointless this stuff is. If I only held onto the stuff that was most essential to my existence, then I probably wouldn't have much. Alas, I am a pack rat, so that's not so easy for me to do. Then it made me realize how so many other people have similar issues. We all have to go through our crap in our rooms (or homes if you have them) and occasionally clean out all the unnecessary gunk clogging up our space. And it was with that thought that I realized that we all have to do the same with our lives.

We all like the comforts of routine to our life. A routine gives it stability. The routine makes us feel safe and comfortable in our environment and in our lives because it is the routine that gives us something familiar. A break from that routine leaves us shaken or scared. Something that forces us out of that routine leaves us feeling blind and naked in the middle of the busiest place in the world. But how can we ever really live and enjoy life if we can't break from the routine? Every now and then life forces us to move, to break, to change, whether or not we actually want it or accept it. But what if we cleaned our lives like we clean our living spaces? If we did that, maybe the abrupt changes wouldn't be so abrupt. If we take a look at our lives every once and a while and just cleaned up everything that was unnecessary or holding us back, imagine how much we could do, how far we could go, how much we could achieve! The possibilities are endless.

So this was my thought that I chose to share with you, my readers. Life, our lives specifically, is something that we should keep in touch with. Why do we all let our lives drive us rather than being the directors ourselves? If we keep in touch with our lives, keep in touch with reality, "clean out the clutter", imagine the possibilities. It's your life, be the engineer and steer it in the direction you want it to go.