I was cleaning cat hair off our furniture a couple of days ago and thinking about the Golden Rule. I muttered about it, too. To the cats, who had no opinion but thought the whole removing-cat-hair-with-a-dish-glove business highly entertaining and a good game. They wanted the cat hair back. I wanted to get rid of it.
Ozzy 2021
Sometimes I feel I’ve spent my life cleaning.
Don’t get me wrong. Cleaning can be a sacred activity, a Baba Yaga kind of activity. Few things are as satisfying to me as making order out of chaos; sorting the unwanted and unnecessary from the useful and beautiful is something I always enjoy.
On the other hand, cleaning is emotional labor. Physical labor, too.
When I say “I love you,” part of that is a commitment to provide a clean, comfortable, healthy space. Part of my own self-respect and self-love is providing myself a clean, comfortable, healthy space.
It’s not a question of money. Paint is peeling off many surfaces in this house. That doesn’t mean those surfaces need to be dirty. Yes, the floor is pitted, stained and scarred. That doesn’t mean I don’t bother to scrub off the grime. Yes, the front door gaps and sags. The metal screen door is getting rusty. That doesn’t mean they have to be filthy.
So, cleaning. For all of us, myself, my partner, and the cats.
I know some people will say the cats don’t care. My partner has said he doesn’t notice.
But I care. I notice. And I don’t know the cats don’t care. Why should they live in unnecessary squalor?
Anyway. The Golden Rule. Do unto others, etc.
I think the Golden Rule is a good way to live. I live by it. The problem is the rule itself implies others will do unto you as you do unto them.
And that’s simply not true.
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It’s like tolerance, or respect, or reciprocity. Treating others by those standards does not mean we’ll receive the same treatment.
I’m angry about that. Living by the Golden Rule is expensive in time, energy, and patience. I choose to do it because it’s part of my integrity as a human being, but it’s not easy, and it’s not an investment that always pays off. Which is sad. And disconnecting.
I’ve asked it before and I ask it again. When have we given enough?
Then I received a post in my Inbox from Joshua Fields Millburn titled ‘The Boundaries of Discontent’ about this very subject. Tolerance, he says “can be a magnet for neglect.”
Amen.
The Golden Rule is an effective guide for choice. I feel good about myself and the way I show up in the world when I employ it. But it’s only the first step.
The second step is observing whether it’s reciprocated in any given situation and continuing to make healthy, self-supportive choices based on that observation.
It’s wonderful to give positive things to the world and others, but we need to notice if we’re not receiving in kind. Giving out of an emotional deficit is not sustainable. We deserve more than that. We can find people who live the Golden Rule, people like us.
Millburn says we encourage what we tolerate, and he’s right. Tolerance is too heavy to carry alone in a relationship, and unbalanced tolerance is simply clutter. When we stop tolerating the absence of reciprocity, or more than a few days of cat hair on the furniture, we can move into a simpler, clearer, cleaner life.
Healthy boundaries are not intolerance.
I don’t want to be the friend who never reciprocates. In fact, I’ve voluntarily left more than one relationship because it was clear that who I am was making others unhappy or uncomfortable and I was unable to find a way forward into something healthier with them. I don’t want toxic people in my life, and I won’t be a toxic person for anyone else, either. Do unto others has sometimes meant letting go and moving on for my sake and theirs.
Tools for healthy relationship and connection like the Golden Rule work best when both parties bear their weight and use them. If that’s not happening, the tool becomes ineffective, even destructive, and the relationship falters.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To a point. But don’t get too carried away. And don’t build expectations of reciprocity around it. Follow it because you believe it’s the right thing to do and let go of the rest.
It’s time. Harvesting Stones is now live, after six months of hard work. I hope you enjoy the new site as much as I do!
Why harvesting stones? We can’t plant pebbles and grow big stones. Why would we want to?
Stones are hard and heavy. Aside from gemstones or the pebble in our shoe, we don’t think about them much. Stone, after all, is everywhere. Healthy soil is the child of stone, plants and animals. Stone is literally the foundation of our world. It’s the raw material we live on, build and decorate with. Stone shapes the land. We break our backs and tools on stone.
We also, especially as children, marvel at the colors and shapes of stones. We pick them up, finger them, carry them in our pockets, take them home and set them on a shelf or table.
Stone is elemental. It contains a record of the planet’s history, and our history as a species. It contains the future, for every stone eventually wears away. It’s what remains when all else has perished, like bone, like seed. Stone endures.
Stone is resilient. It weathers. Water shapes it. Plants split it. Lichen breaks it down. Volcanic heat melts it. It can be chiseled and carved, and then time blunts and wears away the chiseling and carving. Given enough exposure and time, stone becomes sand and soil. It’s never lost. It’s always becoming.
Stone is uncompromising in its simplicity. It will bruise us, scrape our skin off, cling stubbornly to the field where it’s not wanted, make us ache with its weight. It doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It’s authentic.
Harvesting Stones is about presence. It’s about appreciating the stones we trip over, the stones we carry in our hearts and bellies and pockets. It’s about coming to terms with discomfort and looking past our narrow focus on monetary value and popular beauty. It’s about power.
I lately came across an exercise in The Enchanted Life by Sharon Blackie. She asks the reader: If you could be any place in the landscape, what would you be?
By Joshua Sortino on Unplash
I would be a cave. A hidden place, a haven. A cozy cave from which I could hear and see and taste the outside world. I’d be a cave with a spring falling into a stone basin, a cave with ledges and shelves, a cave with, perhaps, a bat colony in some part of it, or a hibernating bear, or a new animal mother and her young. A womb of stone.
Not surprisingly, caves show up everywhere in my reading and writing.
Creating Our Daily Crime was an extraordinary experience. I could never have imagined how many stones I would turn over, how much I would grow and learn, what I would discover, what I would let go. I was unprepared for how powerful it would be. Powerfully healing. Powerfully connecting.
Now I want to do more with that power. I wanted something more creative, more authentic, and more accessible for readers, browsers, and searchers. I wanted to create a digital space to share more poetry, more resources, more stories, and my books.
“Peace cannot be created – it is already there beneath the chaos.”
The truth of this struck me at once. We don’t construct peace. We uncover it.
Photo by Nicole Mason on Unsplash
The practice of minimalism, for me, is the practice of letting go, of letting things fall away. I don’t do that to make my life empty. I do it to uncover the life I want.
If I want peace in my environment, I need to remove everything obscuring it.
If I want peace in my relationships, I need to clear away whatever obstructs it.
If I want internal peace, I need to peel away whatever destroys it.
It’s such a simple idea, and so monumentally difficult to put into action.
How do we figure out what’s strangling our peace?
Likely, at least some of what’s killing our peace are habits of action and thought we’re deeply invested in or frankly addicted to. Things we don’t want to give up or feel unable to give up. Sometimes we’re so attached to certain habits or possessions we feel life is not possible if we can’t have them or engage with them. Our survival depends on them, and peace takes a back seat to survival.
Except maybe it doesn’t. Maybe, in the long run, we can’t survive without a certain amount of peace.
If we undertake the work of identifying what’s between us and peace, we’re going to find feelings. Lots of feelings. Feelings we don’t want to feel. Feelings we don’t know what to do with. Feelings we’re afraid to express. Feelings we’re ashamed of. Feelings that are tearing us apart.
Until and unless we find appropriate, effective ways of managing and processing our feelings, we’ll never uncover the peace buried beneath them.
What if there’s nothing to make and nothing to buy? What if there’s no app to use or post to make?
What if what we have to do is discard everything concealing the peace, love, health, time, self, or authentic life we want?
We can’t discard our feelings, but we can learn how to manage and integrate them. We can discard toxic pieces of identity. We can discard thoughts, beliefs, patterns of behavior, and addictions. We can discard digital and real-life clutter. We can discard time-wasting and destructive habits. We can discard toxic relationships and toxic relationship dynamics.
It’s easier to buy something. It’s easier to get on Facebook or a dating app. It’s easier to have a drink, or turn on Netflix, or get high, or get numb. It’s easier to eat a box of donuts.
Easier, but all those choices layer a further crust of chaos over the magnificent life we long for.
As I work with the next piece of Allan Savory’s holistic management model from his book, Holistic Management, I’m thinking about choice.
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When I learned emotional intelligence, I understood choice as central to our personal power. The choice to say yes. The choice to say no. Our power to choose mindfully and intentionally is constantly under attack.
I also learned, to my chagrin, how much time and energy I had spent trying to change or fix what I have no power to change or fix and overlooking the places in which I do have power. I could not effectively make decisions until I learned to let go, stop arguing with what is, step away from where the blows land, and stop taking poisoned bait.
As Joshua Fields Millburn says, “letting go is not something you do. It is something you stop doing.”
Reclaiming our ability and power to choose from our unconscious patterns and addictions is a difficult journey. Reclaiming our power of choice from those who have stolen it or seek to steal it is a journey into fear. Reclaiming our power of choice in spite of our fear is an exercise in heroism.
Once we have narrowed the whole we’re trying to manage to the dimensions in which we truly have power, we’re faced with learning how to make decisions and carrying them through.
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The power of choice comes with responsibility. Some people don’t want to consciously choose because they don’t want to take responsibility for the outcomes they create with their choices. Another pattern I’ve often seen is the desire to have as many options as possible at all times – a recipe for noncommitment and a tactic that invariably steals power from others.
Choosing one option means we leave others behind. Choosing, and working with the consequences of our choices, requires flexibility, resilience, and the willingness to be wrong.
We will inevitably make choices resulting in unwanted, unexpected results.
However, refusing to choose is still a choice. Inaction has consequences, just as action does.
If we don’t choose, someone else or circumstances will choose for us.
Is the goal of decision-making perfection or empowerment?
Is the right choice the one giving us the outcome we want? Is the wrong choice the one resulting in an outcome we didn’t foresee or dislike?
Some choices are easy, like which shirt to wear.
Some choices tear us apart, like being forced to choose between caring for ourselves and caring for someone we love.
Most of the choices we make in a day we never even notice.
Some choices change the direction of our lives and we never forget the moment we stood at a crossroad and made a decision.
We can’t necessarily tell the important choices from the unimportant ones when we’re faced with them.
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The ability to choose is strength and power.
The ability to choose involves risk and uncertainty. No matter how well we gather information, weigh pros and cons, and try to imagine the future, choice is largely a leap in the dark. As we choose, so do those around us. Our choices impact them, and their choices impact us.
It’s absolutely impossible to predict where some choices will take us.
In Savory’s model, the holistic context directs decision-making. If we know something about where we are, and something about where we want to end up, we can build a path from here to there. Our choices are steps along the path, taking us forward. The cause and effect of choice is always uncertain and dynamic, so we can expect our path to fork, detour, double back, and otherwise confuse and confound us.
Choosing is a flow that never stops. Once we’ve decided to step into it, one choice leads to another, and another.
No one, no one can make better choices for us than we can.
Savory proposes a list of questions, called context checks, to help in decision-making:
Might this action have negative social, biological, or financial consequences?
Does this action provide the greatest return toward the goals for each unit of time or money invested?
Does this action contribute the most to covering the costs inherent in the endeavor?
Is the energy or money used in this action coming from the most appropriate source in our holistic context?
If we take this action, will it lead us toward or away from the future resource base described in our holistic context?
How do we feel about this action? Might it lead to the quality of life we defined in our holistic context? What might its adverse effects be?
These questions ask us to think beyond our immediate desires and consider the possible impact of our actions on others, now and into the future. They ask us for our best predictions, and to think carefully about our goals through the lens of sustainability.
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The context checks are not a one and done exercise. Savory suggests they be revisited frequently, either at set intervals or in case of unexpected outcomes and events.
There will certainly be unexpected outcomes and events, as well as new information. Each choice we make teaches us something, and we (hopefully) integrate what we’ve learned into our next step.
Learning to make choices, and discerning the places in which we have no power to make choices, are two of the most essential things we can do in life. It seems to me the act of choosing is far more meaningful than whether we or others judge our decisions and their outcomes as “good” or “bad.”
Sadly, our culture seems more concerned at present with criticizing and/or eliminating the choices of others rather than developing and supporting good decision-making skills that foster personal power for everyone. Many of us spend too much time preoccupied with things we cannot change, actively disempowering ourselves and making ourselves miserable.
I love solitaire. I find it infinitely soothing. Of course, there’s a line between soothing and numbing, just as there is with any activity. As long as I mindfully use a game or two as a tool rather than being used by it, it’s one of my favorite wait-I-need-to-think-about-this or catch-my-breath techniques.
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The thing about solitaire, whether we play the old-fashioned way with a deck of cards, or online, is each game is different because we shuffle the cards.
We shuffle the cards.
We make choices as we play, so we have some control, but the shuffle is random. Always the same cards, but in different positions every time.
Sometimes we win. Sometimes the cards don’t fall right, or we make mistakes, or both, and we lose.
One of the unexpected results of working with holistic decision-making is it’s forcing me to reshuffle my cards.
Each of my relationships is a card. My job-for-a-paycheck is one, and exercise, and sleeping, and eating. My Be Still Now time is a card. All the ordinary household tasks and activities of daily living have a card. My time is a card, and my energy another. Each piece of my life can be represented by a card.
When I don’t shuffle the deck, I keep laying out the cards in the same old way, in the same old order, and experiencing the same old frustrations and challenges.
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Holistic decision-making demands a fresh look at what I’m trying to manage and why, as well as an assessment of my personal deck of cards, including priorities, resources, and sustainability. In looking at my life from an unaccustomed vantage point, through the filter of Allan Savory’s model, I see previously unconscious choices and patterns that are not in line with my current intentions.
The cards haven’t quite fallen right, or I’ve made mistakes, or both. My deck is too large and I need to discard, or too small and I need to add some cards. I’ve dealt less important cards on top of essential ones.
So I’m reshuffling my cards and exploring new layouts.
I can’t do everything. I want to. I think I should. I can’t.
Everything and everyone can’t be a priority. Some of my time and energy investments have provided little or no return. In some ways my life hasn’t been reflecting the truth of my heart.
So I’m reshuffling my cards.
Photo by Geetanjal Khanna on Unsplash
I could refuse to reshuffle. Eventually, life will force a reshuffle, maybe in painful and unexpected ways. I could wait for that. On the other hand, I can face my fears, be willing to cut my losses, tell the truth (at least to myself), and let go of what’s no longer serving me.
I choose to reshuffle.
Not enough time/space/energy for what’s really important? Exhausted and overwhelmed?
