| I’ve been living with my adorable husband for 4 years now, and known for five, but never had the opportunity to assembly a piece of IKEA furniture together.
If you haven’t put IKEA furniture together before….you’re in for an adventure in analysis, patience, deciphering code, and victory. We put a wardrobe together for 5 hours….well, ALMOST put it together. Was that worth the cost of the reduced fee for a sturdy pine wardrobe, I ask? And let’s define sturdy, by the way… But I digress! The most important thing I found very intriguing was my inner thought patterns that flowed out towards this person I know very well, my team mate on this project. Goal = get wardrobe built. During that goal….oh look. Gosh, was that ME who was thinking such things?
The whole thing was hysterically funny, really. I was like a dog holding a bone and you would have to kill me to get it. I was not leaving that room until that thing was put together, come hell or high water. At midnight, we turned in. With the doors not yet assembled. AAARRRRGHGHGHGHG! Heh heh, not that I would take a little furniture assembly seriously or anything. The Work can be applied on any stressful situation. Even if the stress is mild. Even if you have NO investment and it’s totally and completely 100% fine with you that things are going EXACTLY the way they are and it’s NO BIG DEAL, and who cares…it’s only a piece of furniture! This should go faster. Is that true? Can I absolutely know that everything would be BETTER if this thing went faster? Am I sure that this is not fun? And that HE should know how to put this together without even looking at the directions? Is it really annoying when someone else does it differently? What are the advantages of doing this little mini project in life? Who would I be without the thought that this task is irritating, time-consuming, or unimportant? Or that I can do it better alone? What daily tasks do you find irritating or less-than-pleasurable? What’s the payoff in finding them unpleasant? The thing is, even small teensy little incidents or tasks can be experienced joyfully or with attack. Like driving in traffic, picking up groceries, going to the library, vacuuming, mowing the lawn, going to the gym. These are the things we do most repeatedly in our lives, after all. What if they were not just ho-hum, and not irritating, but WONDERFUL? The way I know out of the idea that something is unpleasant is to question it. The sooner the better. No. It should not go faster. No, it should not go as I command. No, I do not know how to do this but I can follow directions and so can my companion. Everything is OK. In fact, this is quite magical. There are only pictures on the directions, but we are doing it without words. It’s a game. The hammer moves, the screw driver appears, someone explains what they just figured out, hands all operate together to lift, turn, create. It should go exactly the speed it is going. This wardrobe, this traffic, that appointment, that phone call, this day, that taxi ride, this road-service phone call, that ambulance, this test, that shopping trip….this life. This experience should go exactly as it is going. In fact, it’s beyond me to think about ordering moments, space, knowledge and time around. And wardrobes. That’s the job of Something Else. “Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has nothing to lose.”~Tao Te Ching #64 Love, Grace Learn About All Teleclasses Here
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The Work of Byron Katie with Grace
question your thinking, wake up to a kinder life