Hidden treasure? Or just a Hedgehog.
So I am visiting my girlfriend Linda. It was her birthday the other day and she and Mark had their friends Roland and Marlene over to celebrate. Good fun and Roland is a hoot. A solid German man with a wry and abrupt sense of humour. They are actually moving back to Germany in a couple of months. Here is the lovely spread we had to eat. Exciting eh? But I digress.
O.K. I am hungry again just looking at this!
So I am helping Linda clean up later after the guests have left. Earlier in the dinner, Marlene was looking for some ice and Linda said that she didn’t have any and infact didn’t even know where her ice trays were or if she even had any. As I am helping Linda clean up, I am putting some dishtowels away in a kitchen drawer and I see the ice trays. So I let Linda know. Then I start sorting through the drawer to see what else is there that Linda might not know about.
Then I just go into some weird automatic pilot where I keep looking through the drawer until Linda finally shakes me out of my revelrie saying, “Sara, whatcha looking for?” And I stop quite suddenly realizing that I had no idea what I was looking for. “I have no idea,” I said, “I was just in some zone of sorts.” I realized I had been sorting thjrough the drawer and organizing it while looking for any other goodies but not knowing what. Even during the moment Sebasitian, their three year old, came over to the drawer and started searching through it, which you might expect from a 3-year old, but not from a 44-year old.
It was a weird thing and gave me food for thought the next day. Why would I suddenly search through a friends drawer and I didn’t even know what I was looking for? What did I expect to find? It only had place mats, dish towels, foil, syran wrap and the like. But I thought it was an interesting statement about my life. How perhaps I have often just been searching and looking in automatic pilot and I don’t even know what I am looking for. If I don’t know what I am looking for, how will I find it?
Three year old being a three year old.
The other interesting trait was the automatic sorting and organizing that came over me. Needing to put things into piles of like items and then figuring out the best way to pack the drawer. I didn’t actually get very far because Linda’s question shook me out of my reverie. But I do that all the time. I guess it has also been a way that I have uncovered lost items.
Anyway, I just thought the whole behaviour was not only revealing but also profound. There is something in there other than just neurotic obsessive compulsive behaviour!
Nice to know I have brought up a daughter who likes everything in its place – I think I used to be like that but now my office is a mess!!!
Yes – but perhaps a little too inherently nosey I might be. I like to call it curiousity. Child-like curiousity apparently.
ah… to organize or not to organize….for the most part we are the big O….and then …there’s Mark’s junk drawer..and Carol’s junk room….organized chaos at its best. 🙂
what about purging ones life of all the crap that we hoard and gather and build garages to store!
i would say, Sara, that you have mastered letting go of the extra baggage of crap that we tend to keep around!
I’m working on it but I still think I kept too much in that little storage locker of mine back on Gabriola. With some distance one is better able to rethink these things and also having to carry whatever you need on your back for a year really does help you put in perspective what you really need to be happy. Most things you think you need, you can rent. Besides isn’t most baggage in your head and history?!!! :o)
stress/anxiety reduction?
you have an innate/inherent drive to streamline?
I have an innate/ inherent/stess/anxiety reducing tendency to cover all linguistic shades of grey?
Sometimes I like to ponder the panchromatic dissonance of short person behaviour in a pedal depressed society.