A couple of months ago, I was doing my nightly ablutions when suddenly I heard a crash so loud it stopped me, cold. There are certain sensations we hold in our bodies as preemptive planning. What will I do if somebody breaks in? If a tree falls on my home? Could I jump out this window? Will a neighbor answer my call?
As I sat, frozen, there was an ongoing silence after the crash. No other mischief seemed afoot. Slowly, reluctantly, I went to investigate the source.
Around the corner, off the kitchen, behind a little obscure door… the aftermath. All the shelves in my laundry room had collapsed. What. A. Mess.
I found myself so defeated by the sheer insult of the moment, I just went to bed, pulled the covers over my head, putting this issue under what my mom calls, “The Scarlet Principle,” as in Scarlet O’Hara when she says, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” I thought it rather a good, self-protective measure (until I awoke in the middle of the night and thought of the laundry soap perhaps leaking all over the floor. It was not, thank goodness.).
Over the course of the next day, I slowly cleaned up the (blessedly) few things that were broken, and created a new, stacked formation of crates to serve as storage until I can one day get the shelving replaced. Contemplatively moving through, as a monk might sweep a floor, I thought to myself about what this structural failure might mean. (I’ve spoken before about the storyteller’s plight of “metaphoritis“–making meaning out of every little thing, finding signs and sermons in the mundane.)
I’ve been in my house for nigh’ on ten years now. Over time, I have accumulated a lot more stuff than I had when I moved in from a smaller apartment. Certainly, the pandemic years led me to stash a few extra food items here and there for the “just in cases.” Not to mention all the little things like linens and such I keep for entertaining. And then, last year, a friend gifted me these beautiful, square cabinets I plopped up there to help organize the stuff even better. How smart am I, I thought proudly? They looked so cozy and cute! (Not thinking about how heavy they were.)
Even though I gave myself a lot of space and time to clean up the detritus, I struggled as I worked not to feel humiliated that I should have known better than to put so much weight on the shelves.
What happens when we’re not paying attention to all we’re holding? I’m an over-functioner by nature. I tend to be Your Gal Friday when the ish is going down. Call on me when you need to go to the emergency room, when you need to chat through the problematic co-worker who is making your days miserable. Trust me, friends. I can bring home the bacon…and fry it up in a pan.
But, the cost is high. I might quietly come undone on a random Tuesday afternoon. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
However, let us meditate for a moment on the weight of our stories, especially the larger narratives we tell about ourselves and the world. We have this tendency to pack a lot of encoded DNA into our storytelling. Consciously or unconsciously, we transmit our values, meaning-making, our sense of who we think we are with each story we tell.
I remember the first time I noticed this concept was listening to the NPR show, “This I Believe,” back around 2004. One of our country’s leaders at the time started his essay with the words, “We live in a dangerous world.” I thought so clearly as I heard this, if that is this person’s founding belief, everything he does in leadership will come from that place. Not love, not hope, not solidarity, nor kinship.
In my current one-woman show, Teapot: Existential Angst & The Search for Purpose at the Dawn of the Millennium, I talk about how Jo Carson challenged me to tell a different story about myself. “You’re always spinning yourself as the underdog in every story you send me,” she said, “waiting to be found. “When are you gonna figure out you have to be the hero of your own story?”
To this day, I try to remember I must tell myself a better story. Even if that means that sometimes my laundry shelves collapsing means nothing about my worth, and that I will rebuild them one day.
What are you mountains and molehills are you meandering these days? What could you perhaps unravel, re-shelve, or even get rid of because it no longer serves?