When it comes to spring cleaning, Kara Thompson found out that clearing out the “psychic garbage” is just as important as throwing out the physical trash.
Recently I was preparing to move. While I dreaded the packing, I also realized I had forgotten how much I enjoyed packing and moving, even though most people complain about it. When I was single, I used to move every few years. Moving not only kept me from accumulating piles of useless junk — it kept me living in the present.
As I thought about moving to a new neighborhood, I was saddened by the end of some of my most cherished fantasies about my ideal life in this neighborhood. When I moved into this neighborhood, I had grand visions. My children would be barefooted best friends with the wild-spirited kids of the family living behind me. We would invite the elderly neighbor next door for tea with the kids, and she would become a grandma-like figure to them.
The looming moving date yanked me back into reality. The wild-spirited kids were too busy attending alternative schools to play with mine. In reality, our elderly neighbor was often critical about many things we did.
Now that I was moving, these dreams could never come true. But did they really have a chance of even existing? I started thinking that since I had lived in the same house for many years already, it was more than likely at this point that these fantasies would never come true if they hadn’t already. I felt sad, but then happy. I realized I was mourning the idea of these fantasies and the idealized version of my life they evoked, more than the relationships I had with the real life people involved.
While I was organizing and packing I experienced similar feelings. As I yanked the ad for organic food delivery off my fridge, I suddenly realized “I guess I won’t be doing that”. While I experienced a wave of sadness for not having accomplished one of my goals, it was soon followed by a larger wave of relief. I was now released from the burden of doing it. More importantly, I was released from the guilt I had been giving myself for the whole time I did not do it.
My relief started to grow and grow as I went through the junk drawer. All of a sudden I was gleefully chucking away saved twist ties and random screws. With the disposal of each of these items, I was being freed of all the obligations to which this stuff tied me. By getting rid of my sprouter, I no longer had to someday be sprouting my own sprouts. Getting rid of the touch-up paint for the playroom meant that I was no longer committed to touching up the paint sometime in the future.
I realized that my fantasies about my “ideal” life and the guilt I imposed on myself for not following through was real psychic garbage. These lofty ideals and my self-imposed judgments were what really needed to be cleaned out of my mind. The problem was, I was usually not even conscious of constantly judging myself . Most of the things I had been judging myself for weren’t even that important in the grand scheme of things.
Once the guilt was gone, I experienced a lightness. I felt almost giddy. I was free. So I didn’t get around to doing what I thought I “should” — I was now free to do something different or better in the future. No wonder I had always enjoyed moving so much! The chance to be freed of ones’ fantasies of an ideal life and the self-imposed guilt from not fulfilling those fantasies – how fantastic! No wonder I kept moving every few years.
The best thing about the discovery is this: if I want to, I can stay in the same spot. Every year from now on, however, I am going to make an annual event of the spring cleaning of my “psychic garbage”.
Is there anything that needs to be chucked out of your head today? Cleaning your head out leaves a lot more room for you to bring fresh new thoughts in…
Photo Credit
“Untitled” +fatman+ @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
This post originally appeared on www.conduitofjoy.com, on September 25, 2009.
Recent Kara Thompson Articles:
- Need More Yin for Your Yang?
- Spring Clean Your Psychic Garbage
- Getting Out of the Way of My Root Canal
- Can I Borrow a Cup of Courage?
- Open Yourself Up to the Love Already All Around You
I came across your blog looking at a definition of psychic waste which I used in a poem. In one’s pursuit to be good, just the thought of that makes one expect and be attached. It hangs over the mind like psychic waste that it is instead of just be-ing. I’m grateful to have come across your insightful writing.
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What a great way to look at things; it’s amazing how much psychological entanglement we have with stuff, places and people. Thanks for sharing.