It ill becomes me: that I’m older,
Time I should be more sensible…
And yet the frivolous disorder
Fills every jitter of my soul.
— Alexander Pushkin, Confession
I had the house power washed a couple of days ago. I say this with some chagrin, for I own a pressure washer and generally do such things myself (fancying myself a homeowner for some time now). But I will acknowledge that things fall through the cracks when we get busy living under the robe of identity we weave for ourselves. It was easier to simply pay someone to do what I could well have done myself.
My job was to remove the screens from the windows. Let me confess that some of those screens haven’t been removed in twenty years. We thought we had clean windows because we could see out of the glass. It turned out we did not have clean windows. But now that we do, the revelation of all that we’d been missing is a little embarrassing. That we can see clearly now makes the time not seeing clearly all the more surprising. There are of course analogies to be drawn between those windows and the current state of things in the world, but really, why go there yet again? Most of us can see it now, but there are still too many blissfully unaware of what they cannot see.
We all get busy and focused on things that make us not see other things that whisper for attention. Sometimes we have to be jolted into awareness by a check engine light, or the sudden passing of a friend we thought was doing okay because they simply said they were. We ought to dig deeper, we ought to be more rigid in maintaining order in our own lives, that nothing escapes us. But this is folly; the very act of focusing on one thing means that we inevitably take our focus off of something else. We can’t be everywhere at once, we have to trust that some things will take care of themselves.
So it is that things slip through those cracks. Dirty windows aren’t the worst of things, and I’m pleased that they’re now clean again. It’s prompted me to look at other things that have whispered for attention and to knock off a few other things before the long, cold winter calls. I’m older now, even if I’m not yet old. There are things that must be done to keep order with myself, and not just this house. Disorder is an acceptable condition of youth because there always seems to be more time left to get back on track. In time we either learn to see clearly or have our light dim for want of attention.
The opposite of frivolous disorder is focused discipline. That may not sound fun at all on the surface, until we put one foot in front of the other and make meaningful progress in our lives. I used to love that line from The Beatles’ song, “Oh that magic feeling, nowhere to go”. But I’m older now, and it turns out that I’m quite fond of having someplace to go, and something to do when I get there. We’ll never have it all figured out, but we ought to find something tangible to call our life.
