Free Yourself from Your Stuff
Courtesy of Carmen Coker, owner of Clutterbugs:
A well-known Zen parable tells of a wanderer on a lonely road who happened upon a fierce stream that had washed out the bridge to cross over it.
The man, afraid to swim against such a strong current, decided to build a raft. He spent many hours cutting down trees and vines for the project. In the end, the wanderer had a very sturdy raft that brought him safely across the river.
Once on the other side, he thought to himself: This is a good raft. If I meet with another stream ahead, I can use it again to navigate the water.
And so the wanderer carried the raft for the rest of his life.
Think about the moral of this story for just a moment.
From the outside, looking in, this might seem ridiculous. Why would some guy carry a heavy raft around if he didn’t need to?!
But, often times, we do this same thing in our own lives. Maybe not a raft, but maybe something else. It’s not uncommon for people to hang onto an item because it was useful at one point or another but has since become irrelevant. Bottom line: it’s now clutter.
If this sounds familiar, I encourage you to take a few hours throughout the next week to purge these objects that no longer add value to your home, office, or life.
Don’t carry these “rafts” when you don’t need to…
