Pushing aside the meaningless to get to meaningful

Clutter is the meaningless getting in the way of the meaningful. http://www.imperfecthomemaking.com/2011/10/organizedhome-day-8-defining-clutter.html

I have quite a few framed pictures of people I love around my house. I happen to have a rather large collection on this counter top that separates our kitchen from our "dining room". I love those pictures. I think that they are a representation of what's important to me and my family and that's simply we have people whom we love and whom love us. (At the end of the day - and life - that's what is going to matter the most but that's a different blog!) But that counter top is like the bane of our family. It has become the clutter catch-all. It's kind of the first surface that is easy to lay stuff down on when you walk through the door. So it gets cluttered pretty quickly. Some weeks we keep it fairly cleared and then other weeks...well I'd prefer to just leave it to your imagination.
Here's my point and it goes perfectly with today's quote. When that counter top gets too cluttered I don't see the pictures that I love any longer. The clutter gets in the way of those faces that I love and I know love me. Those faces are very meaningful in my life but the clutter distracts me from them...more often than I'd like.
Sure it's a simple example of how true today's quote is but maybe it got you thinking. What clutter is in your life (seen or unseen) that is getting in the way of meaningful living?

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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