It's untidy, it's disorganized, this is such a mess, you are such a waste....
The hoarding makes your room look small, your vintage artifacts age fast and apt well with the old cottage theme your room puts on. The melted candle stubs still stick to the greasy patina table near the flaked corner wall. Dirt of small twigs and kindling gifted by Bob the pigeon and Timur the beagle heaps on your broken shoe. Files, books, damp towels, chocolate wraps, too much, too complex a picture for a child's jigsaw puzzle. The farrago of objects crammed here never had the luxury of having its own spot. At night in the absence of your movement there is a truce and every object rests in its poise, paused, before resuming their fight for space as soon as the balance is distributed by slipping, falling, spilling, scattering, rolling and sometimes perhaps even by burning. But is it really that bad? Let's see...
It's finally your day. Sunday morning welcomes you with its affectionate warm kiss on your sleepy eyes making its way through the dusty window, between the stains of turquoise ink splash that you never wipe. It's almost mid-day, and you aren't guilty for missing that cockcrow coffee for you know papa dawn loves you and would want you to finish your peaceful sleep, who looks at you like how a father would to his sleeping baby. Your every cell feels revitalized and you chuckle at the early morning roosters and the myths they boast.
There is no rush. Squandering your time, slumping on a dusty cushion beside the old hearth where the smoldering coal vibes with your lazy mood, you take the first sip of your favorite brew. Attentive-to or oblivious to, you create your own filters and start drifting away humming along with the notes of melody played from your grandfather's rusty gramophone. At sundown, you find yourself enjoying the twilight, a worn-out novel in one hand and with the other you protectively pet the back of your furry friend. The aromas diffused from the broken odorizers rise above ever so fusty smell of your room and compete to please you. When you take a pause and look up removing your eyeglasses, the cobwebbed walls help you in your armchair travel to the adventures of scooby-doo. You recline, your strained eyes finally relax at the ceiling joists that house healthy termites, the dust haze obscures the ambiance, you enshrine the maturity it adds.
For all we know good manners, neatness and cleanliness is always good, but we have been so bound by spells for compulsive tidying, diligence and punctuality that our ability to acclimate with even a small chaos is fading away. Denying the proven fact that a messy desk is a sign of genius, we still fall for feeling that satisfaction, that ahaa fulfillment and put more efforts in petty tasks, missing out the bigger picture.
To me this enlightenment happened when I was back to my house on vacation. I had a good time for myself. I had learned not to be so hard on myself. I didn't need to justify my existence by achieving a clean room. My OCD was at bay which had previously consumed me when I was sharing my flat with two of my well accomplished friends where there was a constant need to feel the satisfaction of achievement when my self-esteem was always pushed to the lowest bar.
Should our self-worth be justified by tidying? Should our existence be justified by always achieving something? maybe perhaps something tangible if peace does not count?
Orderliness desiccates creativity. Be lazy, be creative! Don't tidy your room, you will never know when your dear chum muse who must have been sleeping somewhere in the scraps and hoards, or in the hodgepodge of gubbins and garments, or in the dirt and dust, would one day wake up and decide to have a date with you. Let your creative subconscious do the work of collecting raw data while you give rest to your conscious mind. Get important things done by being lazy and by escaping from being caught in thick and thin of small things. The raw materials for ideas are always stored in everyone's subconscious, as every person who walked this planet has faced every bullshit and bliss that life throws. Those raw materials just need some rekindling to surface beautifully in your calm mind, just like underwater roots collecting minerals to blossom enticing flowers on still waters.
But still...... I never understood why Steve Jobs always needed everything white... wouldn't that be like a White-room torture given to the prisoners of Venezuela.
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