Toxins

My parents very nicely bought a new mattress for the spare bed downstairs, which was set to become MY new mattress since I need one more. So we moved it up last night.

And I couldn't sleep! I kept breathing in the many toxic fumes from the mattress - the formaldehyde, fire retardant, and the list goes on. New mattresses are swimming in toxins.

Finally I got up and slept on the couch.

I ask you: is it too much to ask that we stop poisoning our world? It's keeping me up at night.

Space

My sister came to visit and we did a second clearing-out of my clothes. I can't believe how much we got rid of. Clothes I don't like, that don't fit or I don't wear. Goodness, the joy!

The end result: a more compact collection of clothes that I like! I even, perhaps, love. And now all the right things fit together in a pile with everything like them. So I have one pile of T-shirts. One pile of tank tops. And those are both in the same drawer, together with my single pile of shorts. And with all like things together, it's so much easier to find what I want!

The added bonus is space. Things now hang easily in my closet. And I now have empty shelf space. Empty! Nothing in there! It is such a soothing sensation to see that space - there to be used, if I need it, but not being used now. I can breathe more easily knowing I have that space.

It's the same, I think, with having chunks of time-space and nothing in them. The past 6 months have had so many activities and commitments. There was something to do almost every little chunk of time. I couldn't just do nothing. Every weekend, every day, had some bit of work or a meeting or even just fun things like a class or jam session in them. But no nothing. No empty-ness, open to whatever I felt like doing. No whole day or days to let my mind wander, body relax and creativity create.

Both temporal and physical space are essential for me. They allow me to breathe and get to the more fun, creative and nurturing things I want to do.

Major insight

Foundation. That's the base of something, which should be strong and well-developed before you build on top of it.

I've just realized that I have two competing notions in my head. One is that the foundation of anything we do should be as strong as possible from the VERY BEGINNING or we are dooming the superstructure to failure. So the very first date with a new man, the first day in a new classroom, your first week on the job - the quality of these experiences determine the entire future of that experience. And from this perspective, you can't go back and re-build. What you bring from the very beginning is the maximum goodness (broadly defined) that can develop out of that.

However, this is a very static model. It is appropriate for things like buildings, which don't grow and change; but for human relationships, I have just realized that a more dynamic model might be appropriate.

Of course the beginnings of things are important. If you build a relationship on lies, insecurities and unkindness it is likely to degenerate quickly. However, in most relationships and things we do, if we work at it sincerely we get better over time.

For example, honesty is vital. However, learning to be honest takes time and practice and trust. I can see that as you get deeper into a relationship, your levels of honesty can grow, building on whatever you put in initially. Or consider teaching: if you work at it, you will get significantly better over time, regardless of what skill or connection level you start with. Or consider that the whole field of marriage education is built on the premise that we can learn and do better and better and better over time.

This new outlook excites me. I still want to start things off right, but now I feel that I can start where I am, and grow from there.