Get Organized

I am an all or nothing kind of person. I hate doing anything half way. It will either get done fully or not at all. My logic is, if you're not going to finish it, why start it in the first place? Now this kind of thinking has gotten me into many short projects and through simple tasks, and pushed me through long, heavy, complicated and difficult projects. It has also caused my room to turn into a gigantic "pigsty", as my mom likes to call it. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw the Get Organized assignment. It meant that I would have something clean at last! But as it turns out, I had been dragging it out, wondering when am I going to find the time for 45 minutes of cleaning? Between school, work, and homework, I can't find the time to get enough sleep in and now I had to find time to organize. Thinking about it, that was the only downside to this prompt, it takes time.
During that time, I knew where my train of thought would lead me. It goes like this...

" If I am going to organize my closet, I may as well do my laundry, including my sheets, but then I'd have to clean under the bed, which leads to vacuuming, and as long as the vacuum is out I should clean the whole floor. But all this junk is in the way, when did all these water bottles get here, I never knew I had so many chargers and belts, there's the humidifier I never use after it has run out of water, more clothes, binders and random papers, teacups, flashcards, candles, paychecks and earrings, hair dryers, slippers, then the "aha!" moment when I see that my headphones were under a sweater this entire week, receipts and the list drones on and on."

You can see where this is going. This is how my cleaning starts every single time. I love organizing my closet, the catch is that I do not find having a clean closet with a whole hamper and a half of clothes waiting to be reincorporated into the closet, at all satisfying. At this time, I extend this 45 minute organizing of my closet session and reach for cleaning(organizing) my entire room in under an hour. No longer dreading it, I am now excited and motivated to get through one hour and see my new, clean and organized room.

While organizing anything my mind goes into a therapeutic cycle, like a sleep cycle. My thoughts start and pause on tangents like, why did I need an assignment to make me clean my room?, and then they would fade away until I caught myself spacing out then something else would grab my attention and a new thought would come and the cycle began again.

I also thought about how many clothes I have that I just do not use, and I have decided to put them to better use and donate them to Goodwill or something.  Looking back at the hour I spent cleaning my room, I am happy with it. True, it is not what I am completely satisfied with but considering I did this in an hour, I am proud of myself. I got a load of laundry done and into my closet, the floor is clean and vacuumed and I can see my desk from my clean bed. All in all, it was an hour well spent.

An Inconvenient Truth

Mysticism suggests that we are all connected somehow, and it made me think how? The answer Mysticism gives is that while God is a part of every individual, every individual is a part of God. Now that statement is misleading because it provokes the question who is God, or who is your God?, but that is not the point here. The key to understanding this is not looking at it from a spiritual point, but looking at it as it is. In our reality, we are all dependent on one another, and that dependence connects us all. 

In the United States of America, we strive for independence from an early age, and have a common goal to be self-sufficient. The truth is, we are not designed for independence, we are critically dependent animals. We are dependent on food, we are dependent on our clothes, our homes, most of all our families and friends. Show me one single study that shows a healthy human behaving normally after 15 minutes of absolutely no human contact. That means no music, no phones, no television, radio, nothing. It is just not natural. We are designed to be dependent on each other.

That is not a negative aspect. Look at how far we have come in technology. Tell me, was the iPod invented by one person? No it took a whole corporation to come out with each and every version. It is not just our technology, each nation is dependent on another for supplies and alliances, all adding up to safety in numbers. Proving the point that even if the whole religion topic is not your cup of tea, Mysticism does not have to apply to just God, one could even interpret it as we, together are God since each of us is a part of Him. To agree with this idea of mysticism is to understand that our dependence on each other is what has kept us dominant for so long.

Connection: Sophie and I

This week we have been reading Sophie's World in class and it follows a girl who is being unorthodoxly taught about philosophy, and through her experience we are as well. We are learning about history and philosophy through spectacles that make it not the typical history course. It is a history course in disguise or it could also be interpreted that we are wearing rose colored glasses thanks to the added perspective of Sophie. Either way it is a very clever way to teach philosophy.

Sophie's World is written in a way that makes it relatable to high schoolers especially because it is written through the perspective of a high schooler. It connects to all of us because she is fourteen and we were fourteen not so long ago and it is easy to remember that mindset of confusion and looking for an interest that feels right and is so enjoyable it isn't work anymore. Everyone remembers how disorienting freshman year felt and how finding an interest acts as a life vest in an ocean of new things.

No matter how it started, she found something she enjoys and it is developing her mind and character. Not floating in uncertainty and at least asking questions helps her ground herself like art is for me. Just like Sophie, I rarely make time for it until something is in my face and it is just too tempting to pass up, and just like Sophie it built on to my mind, perceptions and character.