Does 'Tidying Up' Have a Spiritual Effect?
Does ‘Tidying Up’ Have a Spiritual Effect?
If you’re in the process of tidying up your home, you may have noticed that there’s an interesting connection between decluttering and our spiritual wellbeing.
If you’re a regular Netflix user, as I am, you probably spent the last month reflecting on how many possessions you own, and what you need to do to declutter. Tidying Up with Marie Kondo is a charming and useful show, and it’s sparked a lot of conversation among families and on the internet. We are asking ourselves: is my messiness impacting my way of life? Do I own too many things? Do I even use all the things I own? How can I be better?
In an age of rampant consumerism, it’s wonderful to see that a show can make us stop and reflect on our relationship with material objects. Everyone seems to be struggling to get ahead, and it’s very easy to put detachment out of our minds.
Detachment does not consist in setting fire to one’s house, or becoming bankrupt or throwing one’s fortune out of the window, or even giving away all of one’s possessions. Detachment consists in refraining from letting our possessions possess us. A prosperous merchant who is not absorbed in his business knows severance. A banker whose occupation does not prevent him from serving humanity is severed. A poor man can be attached to a small thing. – Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 135-136.
Detachment is not something we only need to think about if we are very wealthy: it’s not letting “our possessions possess us”, no matter how few possessions those are.
We have an unfortunate tendency to associate our achievements, talents and lifestyle with individual possessions. We are regularly bombarded with ads that associate emotions with clothing, jewelry, shoes and cars. Shopping culture has taken over so much of society, and it’s become a comfortable hobby with the appearance of handheld purchasing ability. Our own identity becomes wrapped up in what we own, rather than who we are.
Many people attach value to things because they have spent so long with nothing, and material riches represent their victory over poverty. Others consider clothing, and the ability to never wear something twice, a status symbol. Others have never really thought about it… and only continue to accumulate possessions.
To develop a detached way of thinking takes a concerted effort to separate our material objects from what we perceive to have gained. I find that easy access to shopping apps, and a culture that markets “retail therapy” can easily pull me into a cycle of amassing objects I don’t need. My strategy to fight this is to try to think of things as tools: do they really have a purpose in my life? And if what I want to buy is merely for comfort or beauty, do I really need it? Should I give something away to make space for it?
This helps me assign value to things merely for their usefulness in the moment, rather than ascribing a sense of triumph to owning them. After all, in the grand scope what really matters is intangible, and intimately tied to our connection with God—which, in the end, will be the only thing we take with us from this world.
As we can see on television, and in our own lives, it’s often very difficult to part from our possessions unless we have much practice. And the hardest part isn’t the logistics of going through all our belongings and sorting them—it’s accepting that our belongings aren’t as important as we think they are, and that in freeing ourselves from that attachment, we make more time for the most important part of our lives: our spiritual development, and our relationship to God.
That’s not to say, of course, that in the name of detachment we must give away everything we own and go live in a cave. We all have the capacity to know how much is too much, and look forward to how much more we can grow in detachment. In the end, it isn’t about how much we own, but what meaning we ascribe to what we own. To enjoy what we have, but not see it as the purpose of our lives. And to see our lives as spiritual, not material.
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In many cultures, passing objects to others is customary. Children´s clothes that are too small get passed on to younger siblings or other children in the neighborhood, for example. Regular giving of seldom-used things as part of religious holidays is another. There regular exchanges are another expression of interconnection among members of the community.
Great article Nasim! I always seem to feel more calm after purging and consolidating than bringing more things into the house. It is definitely a practice to stay detached to your possessions while still caring for them. Peace and blessings.