I remember, a few years ago, talking to my therapist about the frustration of not being able to find something when I needed it.
I had been a keen organiser (there was a place for everything and most things were in its place) and took pleasure in being meticulous. My affection for these traits added to the frustration when I couldn’t find something I needed. Life was now under the influence of other external factors. I no longer had the luxury of being a sole contributor to my environment.
After months, if not a year, of on-and-off therapeutic attention upon this much-ingrained thinking, I was beginning to appreciate the creativity veiled under disorganisation.
Woah! What a relief that was.
It was, as if, something inside me had loosened up and was free to move. I hadn’t given up on organisation, rather the lens was wider. The focus was no longer on everything remaining in a box. I was choosing to look beyond what was familiar, and I found beauty within the disorganised. There was now more room – the picture below describes the new perspective. I roughly call this ‘creative disorganisation.’
I remembered this key therapeutic process as I was reading Mark Manson’s article on ‘the subtle art of not giving a fuck.’
Although absolute spaciousness (i.e., not giving a fuck) sounds liberating, boundaries and limits hold us and offer the comfort of security – particularly when other parts of our life become (inevitably) chaotic.
There is a fine line between structure and openness – walking this line is not a skill to master but an art to practice. Thank you Mark for your stimulating thoughts, I value them for what they generated in me.
