Dealing with the muck

No mess, no progress.

Lately, my life has gotten very messy. At first, I was discouraged by the clutter of my life, but I realized that I was in fact surrounded by opportunities. that have arisen because of change.

Picture a pond; it seems calm and clear, but when you stir it up, all of the muck that was sitting on the bottom comes up and clouds the water. The muck was always there and can symbolize underlying problems, unaddressed issues, or to-dos.

Just because you got comfortable and were in a routine so that your pond of life got still and wasn’t disturbed did not make the muck go away; it simply settled.

But when something comes into our lives and disrupts our pond, we blame the disruption for the mess and lack of clarity when it was our lack of attention to keeping our pond free of muck that is to blame, and rather we should see such times as an opportunity to clean up what has been stirred. I wrote more about this in my blog post Triggered.

Proverbs 14:4 – “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox.”

Often, productivity is the product of trying a lot of things and messing up a lot. If you can get through the muck, there will be clearer waters and an abundance of true peace.

To take this analogy further, you should strive to be constantly flowing like a river, where clean and fresh water or experiences and ideas are flowing into you while you are simultaneously creating, producing, and letting what enters you flow through you.

In my blog post, creating vs. consuming, I talk more about this. It’s easy for us all to think of that relaxing creak making gentle noises, while the still pond is often the inspiration for monsters.

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

The change and flow of ideas and opinions, habits, and routines are crucial to growing, being human, and being alive.

Don’t stagnate, stir the muck, let the water flow, embrace change.