We've committed the past three days or so to spring cleaning around our abode. As we work from room-to-room, we are constantly amazed at the amount of stuff we've collected!! I'm not referring to all the snazzy little gadgets and gizmos of the modern world nor all the sentimental sap people collect to feed the ego; I'm referring to dirt, hair, lint and who knows what else.
To be completely candid, we're not the tidiest people in the world. Dusting is a foreign word in this household. With so many animals, daily vacuuming would be in order. As the chief household cleaner, I'd be lying if I told you I vacuumed more than two or three times per week some months and once per week or so (with emphasis on the "or so") some other months. And I haven't made a bed in decades!
The only room in the house that gets cleaned every day is the kitchen. Don't want to poison ourselves or something!
So, once or twice per year, we commit to SERIOUS cleaning. That's what we did this weekend and it continues today.
This returns me to the world of dirt. I've probably filled up a small trash bag solely with the muck vacuumed off the carpets. (For good measure, we rented a steam cleaner, so the carpet now looks somewhat like it did when new!) It boggles my mind how much the 6 of us (2 humans, 2 cats and 2 dogs) track in or shed.
This whole exercise has underscored for me one of the valuable insights of philosophical Taoism: the ripple effect. As we go through life, we never fully comprehend how much of what we think, say and do rubs off on others nor how what they say, think or do rubs off on us. If I were to guess the magnitude in terms of my life, I'd say that, if all the things I've picked up from others were deposited in my carpet, it would fill hundreds and hundreds of bags!
We might like to pretend that each of us is an island, but it's not true. No, we each represent one small component in an ecosystem that is interrelated with a plethora of other ecosystems. We are intimately connected with so much more than we can ever realize.
To be completely candid, we're not the tidiest people in the world. Dusting is a foreign word in this household. With so many animals, daily vacuuming would be in order. As the chief household cleaner, I'd be lying if I told you I vacuumed more than two or three times per week some months and once per week or so (with emphasis on the "or so") some other months. And I haven't made a bed in decades!
The only room in the house that gets cleaned every day is the kitchen. Don't want to poison ourselves or something!
So, once or twice per year, we commit to SERIOUS cleaning. That's what we did this weekend and it continues today.
This returns me to the world of dirt. I've probably filled up a small trash bag solely with the muck vacuumed off the carpets. (For good measure, we rented a steam cleaner, so the carpet now looks somewhat like it did when new!) It boggles my mind how much the 6 of us (2 humans, 2 cats and 2 dogs) track in or shed.
This whole exercise has underscored for me one of the valuable insights of philosophical Taoism: the ripple effect. As we go through life, we never fully comprehend how much of what we think, say and do rubs off on others nor how what they say, think or do rubs off on us. If I were to guess the magnitude in terms of my life, I'd say that, if all the things I've picked up from others were deposited in my carpet, it would fill hundreds and hundreds of bags!
We might like to pretend that each of us is an island, but it's not true. No, we each represent one small component in an ecosystem that is interrelated with a plethora of other ecosystems. We are intimately connected with so much more than we can ever realize.
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