Emotional spring cleaning
I know what you are thinking spring cleaning in the winter? It is a cultural condition for a lot of people of color to symbolically start off the year the way you spend the year. In my family it is customary for us clean the house before the start of the new year. I spent the past few days cleaning out my closets. Not an easy undertaking since I have a lot of closet space at my house. It was funny because the outward appearance of my place looked clean. If some one would visit me they might ask why bother?
When I opened my closet in my living room, I first thought to myself do you really want to do this? Knowing that I would surely dirty up the house just to get clean closets. As I looked through the stuff I had acquired, I kept thinking to myself surely there could not be that much for me to discard. By the time I had finished I had realized that I had filled two trash bags worth of refuse.
A piece of paper here, an odd or end there that I had not used in a while., it did not seem to amount to much. But when I compiled It all together I realized that I had been harboring the most petty and useless piece of crap; And mostly for emotional reasons. There were a few things that for whatever reason, a time period, or an event I had held on to, I came across things like movie tickets and hotel keys things that seemed to take me back to the moments in which I acquired them.
I then had a thought of the show hoarders, and how I would see people on that show holding on to inanimate objects that they have projected feelings of people places and things in their lives that they lost. As watched the show without the benefit of my psychological training I remember thinking how could a person place such importance on such insignificant things and hold on to it to the point that they crippled their lives, and effected their environment and the environment of those around them.
It made me think of how we as people hold onto emotional baggage and how every now and then we need to clean our emotional closets of the refuse that we have been holding on to for people in our lives. Even still for those who are no longer in my life.
The Buddah is quoted as saying “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” But this can also go for holding onto resentment, envy, jealous.
I recently had to confront that. I saw an old friend of the family. For years I had assumed that he did something to a close family member. Although I had no proof, I harbored a strong resentment for this man. Without any provocation I have been treating him rather harshly.
Even seeing him after at least 7 years, it brought all of the old emotions that I had held for him and his supposed wrong doing. But by the end of our brief encounter I felt myself letting go of the old hurt and anger that I had felt. Because It hurt me more than it hurt him. Honestly I do not even know if he ever knew that I’d had any ill will against him at all.
But I am sure that there are some things in your life, small insignificant things that you can get rid of in your emotional closet that will lighten you up to accept newer, more desired treasures that you will want to keep always.
Let some of the junk Go.
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