Worse and Better (at the same time)

I am a little afraid to step up to the blogging post because I fell out of its rhythm as we moved last week. But I am more afraid to stay away from it for longer than necessary because I have found this is very enjoyable writing to do. So here I am again.

The second reason I am afraid to do this now is I am not quite certain what idea I want to write upon for just a short while, having barely come out of the foggy haze of moving. Then I found some words of Eckhart Tolle, in “Stillness Speaks” .  I do not take them out of context and I am sure he was not speaking of moving but they sum up my feelings of the past week.

                      “Paradoxically, things are getting worse
                       and better at the same time, although the
                       worse is more apparent because it makes
                       so much ‘noise’.”

While Tolle ascribed this to his belief that the disfunction of the old consciousness and the arising of the new are both accelerating, I feel it applies also to my tiny personal world — in the singular activity of moving a household.

Letting go and “letting it be” and moving into the move actually reduced the “noise” of the move, and made all parts of it more harmonious that I have experienced previously.

The upheaval of shredding and reducing the amount of old papers and materials and the replacement of unused items to thrift stores took on the appearance of things getting worse when in actuality what was moved, had greater value to either Tom or me and therefore were more gratefully placed in our new dwelling.

We spent a lot of time and effort preparing for our move and a lot of energy in moving what we could to save on cost. That was physically exhausting. But keeping at it at a healthy pace for people of a certain age made us ready for the two men and a truck that arrived on Monday morning.

And what men they were! Young, strong, athletic, ambitious, careful, curteous and caring. They had our heavy furniture up and down stairs and upstairs again in a very short amount of time. Gracious men they were.

Behind them, we cleaned out our old townhome and left it spotless for the landlord and the new residents.

Then in one glance when we took stock of how our piled-in and perhaps non-comforming large furniture and stuffed boxes sat in our new home, we looked at one another and could have said the same thing Tolle said: “Things are worse and better at the same time.”

For a week now, we have worked on establishing “better” within our home and as one area becomes better, another area becomes worse because items have been stuffed into it that made the other place better. It’s like getting a wrinkle out — if you can push it far enough, maybe it won’t pop up someplace else.

And things are getting better. I say this as I sit with my computer functioning in its new space, my journal on a surface cleared for it, and tubs and boxes and unfilled bookcases surrounding me. But I have walking space into this place where I do my work and for me that is — good, getting better.

The same is happening in the kitchen, laundry room, dining and sitting room. Yet the light we thought we saw at the end of the tunnel was not a light; it was an incredible Michigan ice-storm, one week from the day we moved, that put 39,500 Kalamazoo residents and businesses out of power.

Included in that number was our daughter’s family — the one we were trying to avoid moving far from because we help each other a lot. Today is a fine example. They are able to stay with us until their power is returned which could be a couple of days.

Better is going in the right direction.