Cleaning up

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There are many ways in which we can ‘clean up’. From cleaning ourselves up, for instance after been involved with sports, or having worked in the garden, to cleaning up after ourselves. From cleaning up a mess, to cleaning up all those things that we are still thinking about what we want to do with them…

Traditionally there are certain times or points in our lives when we may feel an instigation to clean up. The most obvious one may well be the ‘Spring cleaning’ when we clean up all the old things after Winter, enabling ourselves to start fresh in the next cycle of the seasons. But with every major change in our lives we may also feel the need to clean up. To let go of those things that ~ in all likelihood ~ have served us well up to then, but that are now belonging to an older version of our lives and perhaps ourselves; and therefore are not useful to us anymore. This way, the ‘princess-room’ gives way to a ‘teenage-room’. And when move out and start living our own lives as adults, we are likely to place ourselves in a more grown up environment. And so on.

This way we use the process of creating our environment while cleaning up those things that have lost their use, we continuously build our lives and our memories in such a way that it reflects who we are and how we have gotten to where we are at that point in our lives.

And as we feel we have less and less need to surround ourselves with the physical reflection of our lives; of who we are ~ it is almost like cleaning up gets to be harder than it has been before. After all, whatever is left in our lives ~ be it memories or precious belongings ~ are part of a carefully built up environment. And as every piece of that environment has served us so well ~ even when we know it is time to let it go ~ cleaning up is not always easy…

Eventually the time may come that others will be cleaning up after us. At that time it is up to them whether parts of the so carefully built environment that was our life, may somehow fit in their lives. Perhaps as a memory of their own childhood. As a reflection of admiration for the person we were and the life we had built. Or because it is something that at that point in time just fits perfectly in their lives…

It makes that cleaning up is part of the cycle of life…
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