On Dreamshaping: Get Messy

Mark McNease

For many years now people have been led to believe that decluttering is the answer, that narrowing our focus is the way to finally accomplishing what we want to: finish that project, write that last draft of a novel, plant a better garden this year. But what if that’s the wrong approach? Or at least not the approach that works for everyone.

As part of my personal dreamshaping, I’ve decided to embrace the mess. I’ve spent a lot of time in an unnecessary loop of narrowing, expanding, narrowing, expanding, narrowing … on and on, until whatever psychological fix I get from doing this becomes the reason for doing it. The novel does not get completed. The garden does not get planted. Yet the motions continue, the repetitive behavior of trying to make it all fit in the artificial space I’ve imposed on myself.

Rather than spend my life in this endless behavioral loop, and having discovered that less is not more – it is less! – I’ve accepted the messiness. I’ve accepted that I have a half dozen projects to work on, and that’s okay. The messiness is actually what energizes me in the morning! Having options on what to create today works for me. And while I do think decluttering the home, as well as the mind, has tremendous benefits, it’s not always the solution to indecision and an inability to focus. The mind, after all, and despite what we think, can only focus on one thing at time, one thought at a time. Chaos is an illusion: or, it’s everything, all the time. The universe is incredibly messy, and we are tiny reflections of it, we are the microcosms to its macrocosm. So wade in, swirl it all around you. Enjoy this incredibly messy thing called life.