Mostly harmless clutter

My mom would typically run a tight ship at home in terms of keeping things where they belong. However, she was never able to wage a successful war against the clutter on the dining table. The only time we would have the privilege of a clean sorted table was perhaps a half an hour before the dinner guests arrived. Next day, things would start occupying space on that table that had no business being there. My dad would park his wallet and few of his office things. I would contribute with a fiction novel or perhaps a pen or two. Mom would also utilize the flatness for some grains that needed to be sorted. It wasn’t as if our objects didn’t have their dedicated places but we wouldn’t get to that until it was time to react quickly.

Recently my friend emailed me the above strip and while I passed it off dismissively as email humor, it later became apparent that it was a source of much internal debate. Something that got highlighted even more when I have having another introspective discussion with another friend of mine.

It is the classical debate between whether one should live a life with increasing levels of self-awareness or obtain bliss by being ignorant.

Personally, I like self-awareness. Analyzing my short-comings or strengths is very exciting. I am constantly trying to understand my place in this world and how the people I interact with play a role in my life. But this quest of awareness, more often than not, increases my to-do list endlessly. I equate myself with the horizontal surface of a dining table. It is much too easy to add stuff than to find dedicated places or time to move it to. I am getting overwhelmed with this level of concern. I find myself adding more things to the table than taking things off. The feeling that the guests can arrive any time soon doesn’t help either. Self-awareness then can only be good if you achieve saint like levels of heightened senses. Anything less makes your problems more acute.

Ignorance is tricky too. If you chose to be ignorant, then that would mean that you actually quite aware of what you chose to be ignorant off. This is a catch 22 situation that seems to be even worse. If you stay ignorant for a long time until you become aware of your ignorance, then you might end up with a dining table full of issues so chock-a-block that it would end up being terrifying. It is clear then, that ignorance only works if you are born with it and die with it.

Perhaps, what is needed is a magic potion mix of selective amnesia and low dosage of awareness. It becomes imperative to realize that guests are likely to appear mostly on weekends. It is OK if the odd guest gets a glimpse of a cluttered table. And while everything has its place, it doesn’t need to be in it all times. It is almost like you need to be intentionally aware of your ignorance and ignorant about your awareness, to keep both those evils in check.

Or perhaps, you just need to shut your mind up and ignite a Lotus.