The Bare Minimum

Or should it be, Can I Bear the Minimum?

The garden is making me sad right now. It is still producing vegetables, but each plant seems to only have enough energy and motivation to squeeze out one lone piece of produce at a time. I know I should be grateful that half of them are even still alive after being ignored for over three weeks now. That I have the space to grow and the freedom to choose how I want to do it. I sit in the garden and rub my forehead and sigh those long, deep complicated sighs. I 'should' be 'grateful' for so many things.

In my emotionally befuddled state this week, one thing has been repeatedly placed under my nose. I ignored it the first time. The second time it popped up I thought it was odd but still, just coincidence. At the third appearance, from a completely different and random source, I sat up and took notice. Things that happen in threes are not coincidence. The trouble is, I don't like this idea. And I don't like the suggestion from who, God? The Universe? My Gut? that I'm supposed to start doing it. 

- Simplicity -

YUK.

Even more specifically, the messages being personally handed to me were about paring down, giving away, living without. The concept that the less I had, the more I would be. The garden sits out there with the bare minimum hanging from its branches and I feel sick. I can't do this. I'm scared to pare down, to strip away. Afraid that once I take off all the outer layers that make me feel safe and give me purpose, I will find I am not some enlightened, glowing orb of the human spirit at all, but a boring sad girl. Broken, lonely and empty.

The last thing I read that spoke directly to this concept had a quote from D.H. Lawrence, (really? yes.)

"Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? Dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change."

WHY WHY WHY! would anyone want to be dipped into oblivion? Doesn't that go against our entire existence, the point of our struggle to survive and to better ourselves? I know the Bible goes on and on about giving away everything you own, and laying down your life and losing yourself to find yourself...but, come on, who really has the balls to do that? Maybe I'm just not fully understanding the process. Perhaps, all of this has been put before me not to drive me forward into immediate change, but to show me where my weaknesses lie.

The conversations that go on between my brain and my heart these days mostly begin with "I need..." It has been a long time since I feel like I've said things that began with "I have..." or "I am..." And the problem with my language and my world view, is that the more I need the less I always seem to have. The less I seem to have, the more unhappy with myself I am.

I get it, theoretically anyway. But I still don't want to do it. I don't even know where or how I am supposed to begin. Do I clean out my physical closets or my metaphysical ones? Do I stop painting my nails? Can I still spend all that time on Facebook? What do I replace the space with?

I wish Bob the Gnome would just sit me down with a cup of tea and explain the whole damn thing to me.

Suggestions and hairshirts greatly appreciated.

Comments

[Sharon]

I cleaned out my actual closets. It didn't really help. Okay, maybe it helped a little. But not really.