Sparking Joy

It’s seems like wherever I go I run into someone reading or thinking about reading or talking about this Marie Kondo lady and her sparking joy method of de-cluttering your life.

I don’t know, maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the fact that we have been getting our house ready to go on the market. Maybe it’s the fact my wife has been “sparking joy” all over the house (never knew joy could be so stressful!). Maybe it’s one of those things that when you are noticing it you notice it everywhere.

What is clear is that joy sparking has gotten my attention. I’ve been challenged to look at my stuff and consider what to do with it.

There’s a lot of it.

I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder, but I do have a couple traits that make hoarding easier.

One is that I attach meaning to stuff. I have a pile of rocks for instance. They are not special in any way except that each rock was taken from a different mountain that I have climbed. They remind me that I have been capable of doing hard things. They encourage me to add to the pile by doing more hard things. So I have a bag of rocks I am now carrying around with me.

Another is that I’m a get-to-it-later kind of guy. Like with the mail. I get the mail out of the box, but I don’t have the time right then to go through it. So I put it in the stack. It’s a stack because I have done this before. And now I need MORE time to deal with it because the stack is bigger. This happens with clothes. And a variety of other tasks.

A third challenge is that I’m comfortable with chaos. I simply don’t see that I’ve got stuff lying around. I navigate around it or leap over it or shove it to the side without even paying it attention.

I recognize these as obstacles. Perhaps the first one is a tad more noble than the other two. But still, I can’t expect to be carrying rocks around with me for the rest of my life.

So I’ve been practicing joy sparking.

You take something. You hold it up. You thank it for the joy it has given you. You consider whether it’s work for you is done. If so, you throw it in the trash heap and move on.

It hurts just to write it!

But that’s what I’ve been doing. It’s gotten easier with practice. And our house looks so great I’m wondering why we are selling it.

What about you? What are you holding onto? What are the obstacles standing in between you and joy?

Some of those obstacles are not that easy to navigate. But, see, I’ve got this pile of rocks to remind me that I’ve overcome some other big challenges…

…the rocks might survive the move.