Watching the Kids and Purging Our Home

 What an odd juxtaposition of concepts today.

First, I took the day off from work.  My wife and I went to visit our kids’ school.  It was another one of those observation days when we get to spend some time in each child’s class simply observing the daily environment.  Most of the kids are pretty good about ignoring the parents sitting in the corner watching.  Some stare for a minute or two.  Others whisper to one another.  Mostly, though, they forget you are there and go about their business.  So, you get to watch them at work in their world.  It’s always interesting, and with increasing frequency, it provides for a nice, silent bonding moment with our children.  I wish every parent could have this gift.  I wish every school was set up to allow parents to become active participants in the school lives of their children.

I also took the day off to being what I have begun to think of as “The Great Purge.”  No, we are not preparing to hunt Jedi as a means of serving Emperor Palpatine.  Instead, we are beginning a Great Purge in our home.  It is one that I hope will lead us to shed much of the material debris that weighs us down physically, spiritually, and emotionally.  Peter Walsh calls it “cluddah;” Eckhart Tolle refers to it as “the world of form;” and HH Dalai Lama uses the term “material things.”  They are all speaking about the same thing, and what they are talking about us the collection of stuff that we accumulate through the years of our lives.  The “why” behind the stuff…the very personal reasons we decide to keep this thing or that thing…is fascinating to me.  The more I ask myself that question, the more I learn about myself and the nature of spirituality itself.  The connection between what we collect around us and what we collect inside of us is startling.  I am only now just beginning to understand it.  We will see where this Great Purge will lead.

And then there was “Who Do You Think You Are?” which is a new NBC series that chronicles the journeys of various famous people as they learn about their ancestry.  While the premise sounds a bit self-indulgent on the part of Hollywood, there is a central theme that is apparent to me.  It is one that I just heard a few days ago, in another form, while listening to the audiobook version of “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.  The theme is this: those who have come before us…our ancestors…have the power to speak to us.  What they say to us affects how we perceive ourselves today.  Or at least the potential for such shifts in self-perception exist.  Whether you believe these ancestors literally speak to us, in hushed whispers or through artifacts that we “happen” to find, doesn’t seem as relevant as whether or not you believe that it is possible for the emotions and burdens of past generations to be passed down to those who are living today.  It’s a fascinating idea, and the explanations don’t have to be metaphysical in nature.  It is possible that culture and the sub-culture of our own families can perpetuate the way we experience emotion, deal with adversity, and even view the Universe in general.  It could all be psychological.  Or, as some suggest, there is spiritual energy that we hand down to one another through the ages.  

I woke up today disoriented because it was Friday, and I wasn’t going to work.  I prepare for bed today disoriented because I cannot figure out if I am headed down a path that will disassociate me from some some connection to the past or one that will just result in my having less crap in my house.  Heck of a range of possibilities, huh?