Let’s face it, life is messy. It’s fine to have a messy life. In fact, you are brave to choose this messy life, to live it each day. It can be challenging to endure the messiness of your thoughts, emotions, sensations, spirituality, and physical body. Our thoughts are messy, especially when they are scattered, random, confused, and stubborn. When our thoughts are unsettled, we say we have a monkey mind, jumping from one thought to another. Our emotions are also messy, feeling one emotion and then another…like going from contentment to frustration to anger to boredom to anxiety and fatigue and finally to tranquility. Even our spirituality can be messy when we shift from faith to fear to belief to disbelief. We can go from certainty to wonder with regard to our spiritual alignment. Our physical body is messy with all of the different excrements…urine, boogers, feces, farts, sweat. Our hair can get disheveled on windy days or after pulling off a shirt. We may find our clothing grimy if we spill something on ourselves or if we are cleaning up after our children. All aspects of life can be messy, and it is ok.
We are taught to align ourselves with perfection, organization, structure, rules, but life doesn’t work that way…life is messy. Nature demonstrates this fact to us each and every day. For instance, tree roots are buried in dirt and filth. The roots do not grow in perfect formations, they grow in different directions and are random lengths. The tree’s leaves grow and eventually fall in a messy disarray. The tree is not ashamed of the mess that it has created by shedding its leaves. People are the ones who get disgusted with the leaves that have fallen in their yard, and so they go about raking them or blowing them into consolidated piles. We collect the leaves and discard them in order to make the land more presentable and perfect looking. For having scattered leaves in our yard is somehow messy to us, and we consider messy to be forbidden and undesirable. We judge messy. We criticize messy. We feel guilt for messiness. We are shamed of messiness. Yet life itself is messy.
We avoid sharing messy truths for fear of the aftermath. We would rather hide messiness than reveal that it exists in our lives. We will even avoid inviting people over to our home to avoid them witnessing our messy living space. Why are we so opposed to messiness of any sort? Why is messiness something that we strive so diligently to avoid, hide, or correct? What is it about messiness that causes us to feel inadequate? Or is it the expectations placed upon perfection that make us feel inadequate? Are we able to live embracing messiness and disorganization? Are we capable of allowing ourselves to have messy thoughts, emotions, bodies, homes, cars, lawns, etc.? When will messy become a welcomed guest instead of perfection? What do we need to change in order to accept life as it is…messy? Messiness is more authentic than perfection. Mess is liberation whereas perfection can be a type of prison.
Kids are messy, pets are messy, situations can get messy, relationships can get messy, and on and on the list goes. When we crumble the notion that messy is an undesirable state and accept messy as a normal part of life, then we can feel less ashamed. We liberate ourselves to accept life as it is. This is not to say that everyone should just go around and litter and leave messes for others to have to clean up or deal with. Each of us can and should do our best to not allow mess to get out of control, in public and in our personal lives. It doesn’t matter what type of mess, whether it is trash or a messy state of mind. Whether we are having a messy day at work with lots of juggling going on of projects or tasks, the truth is that we must put forth some level of effort to tend to our messes. This means making the time to clear and organize our mental, emotional, and spiritual disarray. We must put forth effort to clean our body and clothing when they’ve gotten dirty or messy.
Life is a messy affair.
When things are messy, it is distracting. There is a sense of chaos, loss of control, disarray, overwhelm, and confusion with messiness. If a closet is cluttered and messy, we may have a difficult time finding what we are looking for in that closet. We waste time looking for things in messy spaces, while an organized and decluttered space allows us to be more efficient. This holds true with our emotions as well. When our emotional energies are messy, we may be confused as to what exactly it is we are feeling. This is where meditation and mindfulness are particularly useful, these techniques allow us to sift through what we are feeling and organize these sensations appropriately. Organizing, decluttering, processing, filing, and other techniques allow us to rebalance and be more efficient in our life overall. Our brain is programmed to organize and purge our daily thoughts while we sleep. This type of mental cleansing and organization is pre-programmed within our body.
Scattered piles of paperwork can be filed so that each document is acknowledged and filed or thrown away if it is no longer needed. Relationships can get messy, and these often require us to take the time to communicate with the other individual(s) to clarify things or resolve issues. This is in a way creating order within the relationship instead of keeping it messy or complicated. Messiness goes beyond our work or living space…it seeps into our mental, emotional, physical, and relational aspects of life too. We can’t escape messiness, but we can work to create a certain amount of order in our life. It does not need to be perfect, as this is an idealistic target that often is unrealistic to attain. Instead, we can seek to create a more organized life. We can have our thoughts and feelings be more orderly by routinely tending to them. Our living and work spaces can become more efficient for our living simply by decluttering and organizing. Since life is a messy affair, and we cannot escape the messiness of life, it is better to simply take the time to go through the clutter and organize it as best we can. What does messiness give to us and what does it take from us? It is helpful to consider our own perceptions of messiness, and what relationship we care to have with this aspect of life.