Blog 506 – 12.26.2016
Boxing Day – The Importance Of Putting Things Away

In Canada the day after Christmas is celebrated as a holiday called Boxing Day. As I understand it the holiday started as a day off for British and Common Wealth servants who worked on Christmas day serving their employers, lords, ladies and their children. And that it was customary for them to go home to their own families with boxes, gifts, food and such provided by their employers. Now of days with fewer people actually employing servants it is more a day of after Christmas sales and putting away all the Christmas decorations.

One of the lessons we were taught as young children was that it is important to put away our things especially if we plan on finding or using them again. I marvel at how much time we spend looking for things. Some people literally spend hours per week looking for their car keys alone. Saturday I drove into the big city of Madison to see a movie and after the movie I made it all the way outside and almost to my truck before I realized that I had misplaced my keys. I walked on to the truck to make sure first that I had not left them in the ignition or inside the truck. Not seeing them inside I figured they must have slipped out of my pocket in the theater. So I walked back into the movie theatre, showed the ticket taker my stub, explained that I wanted to check the seat for my missing keys, and she said “Fine.” Fortunately this theatre was one of the modern ones where you pick your seat assignment and it is printed on your ticket and stub. So I walked right to my seat, felt down to the right side of the cushion, and there were my keys right where I had left them. No big deal, but finding something that you have not seen for hours or longer can be a much more involved process.

Another reason it is important to put our things away is that it keeps things more simple. A lot of unneeded and unwanted stress in our lives comes from clutter and too many things distracting our focus. And, I know, many people think that they are “multi-taskers , gifted with ability to do several things well at the same time. It is an illusion. What people who think that are really doing is creating a lot of work for others and themselves correcting and re-doing all their partially completed or misdone tasks. It is always true that doing a thing right the first time requires focus and is always the fastest and best way to do any job. Accuracy first, speed will come later with practice but dividing our attention only improves the opportunities for errors and omissions. Quick fixes on the fly are mostly only cause for greater problems in our lives.

Properly taking care of things and putting them away saves us a great deal of time and expense. I spend and have spent a lot of time watching people work in my career in Quality Assurance/Quality Control and one of the marks of a good workman is how he or she takes care of their tools, putting them away so they can be readily retrieved when needed for the next job. So on this Boxing Day take a few moments not just to put away all your Christmas things for next year but consider putting away some of those memories and beliefs that only get in the way of your enjoying life to the fullest. Sometimes it is not as necessary to learn something new as it is needful to forsake and forget something old. Too many of us are guilty of carrying around unnecessary baggage and littering our lives with past trials and tragedies to the point that our lives begin to look more like a shipwreck graveyard than the luxury cruise it can be.

Our creator, our Divine and eternal parent loves us and does not say, “Clean up your room. Put your things away.” to punish us but because He/She knows an uncluttered life makes it easier for us to concentrate on what we really want. I saw someone posted on social media, “I want it all.” No, you don’t. None of us does. Many of us are just too distracted by the clutter in our lives to decide what we really want. You can have it all but wouldn’t you really enjoy it more one thing, one dream at a time. I posted the picture of a recent page of my Louise Hay “You Can Do It” Daily Calendar because putting away the past is a very important part of being able to really enjoy today.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White