I have spent my life stringing and unstringing my instrument, and the song I came to sing remains unsung.
                                            ~ Rabindranth Tagore

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After the last blog on “A Space for Your Life” many of you wrote to tell me how you were cleaning out and making space for your life. The interesting thing was that as I read it seemed that what most were doing was cleaning out in order to “prepare” for having a life. This month what I want to talk about is how cleaning out is your life.

So often we get caught in preparing. I’ll live after: after the baby, after I’m in my own house, after the kids are grown, after this project, after the house is done. The truth of the matter is that we are living now, and if we don’t realize it we get caught at the end of our lives looking back to lots of dress rehearsals for living and little real living.

What if clearing out was your life or at least a viable part of your life? As you go through that closet, drawer, or stack of magazines what if you asked, “Is this me?” “Does this represent the person I am today? The person I want to be?” Each thing you let go of can represent something you no longer need in your life, each thing you keep an example of what you want more of. What if you did the same thing with your calendar? What if the only things on it were things that really said who you are and who you want to be?

What we own and do represents who we are and what we value. Do you value beauty? Everyday? The person who values beauty puts it into everything she does. What does it mean to you? Clearing your desk? Eating on the good china? Flowers? Wearing your favorite blouse? Walking in the woods? What is it that can be added or better still subtracted to give your life more beauty?

Life is about being and doing what we love here and now. Every thought we think, our every act, even the smallest is creating the person we are to become. There is nothing wasted in nature or in us. If our lives are about wanting for the future instead of living now we end up with a life filled with wanting and very little living. Each choice we make brings us closer or further from the life we want, whether conscious or not. That includes every chore and daily task, there is no such thing as “preparing” for life. Our life prospers only if we live enjoying life.

Cleaning the closet is not about getting the closet clean. Paul Pearsall, author of “Toxic Success” says that the epitaph of the toxically successful is: “Got Everything Done – Died Anyway.” Cleaning the closet, your desk, your calendar is about designing who you are and who you will become. Defining what has meaning to you now and in the future. So before you start the next closet put on your favorite music, pour yourself a cup of tea in the good china, and enjoy exploring who you are and who you choose to be – LIVE!