I've been thinking a lot recently about the topic of mess: living a messy life and leaning into it. Some of us (ahem - me - ahem) prefer order. We prefer to be organized, we watch The Home Edit and we try to Marie Kondo our lives, both personally and professionally. That's fine, maybe you prefer order in your life too. In fact, there's some evidence that order and organization bring us joy, partially because they give us a sense of control in our lives. But I'm fairly convinced that, even if you're someone who loves order, the path to joy comes through embracing mess.
To be clear, I don't mean that you should give up on doing dishes and start living in squalor. Please don't do that, your roommates, parents, and / or families would hate me. What I mean is that we need to embrace the fact that we cannot perfectly plan out our lives or impose perfect order on the world around us. Instead, we need to be flexible enough to find joy in the messy parts of life, just as much as we do in the perfectly color coded and organized parts.
To be clear, I don't mean that you should give up on doing dishes and start living in squalor. Please don't do that, your roommates, parents, and / or families would hate me. What I mean is that we need to embrace the fact that we cannot perfectly plan out our lives or impose perfect order on the world around us. Instead, we need to be flexible enough to find joy in the messy parts of life, just as much as we do in the perfectly color coded and organized parts.
Mess at school: I've written many different blog posts talking about how to prioritize, make lists, regroup, and create order in collegiate life. But lots of aspects of college life are filled with messy moments - times when you say the wrong thing, or you forget deadlines, or you can't keep up with your obligations and your house or bedroom or dorm room descend into chaos. That's okay! When you say the wrong thing in the classroom or forget a deadline, you can recover. Not only that, sometimes it can be an opening for getting in touch with a professor who you'd like to talk to more. You can use your mistake as an opening to ask questions, learn more about the subject, and maybe even figure out what is cool about the topic that you were missing before when you thought it was just a boring required class.
Mess at home: Some of us are neat-freaks. I realize this isn't everyone, but if you prefer a perfectly ordered house, then it can be really hard to relax enough to go to sleep with dirty laundry on the floor, or to have people over when you haven't vacuumed in 2 weeks. LET IT GO. At least for now. Let yourself go to bed with dirty dishes every once in awhile (as long as your roommate can handle it and you don't get ants). And definitely allow yourself to enjoy some messy hospitality. What is messy hospitality, you ask? Messy hospitality is the act of having people over and having fun, even when your house is a disaster zone. Don't wait for a perfect home before you enjoy your friends. The people who are your people don't care what your house looks like, they just want to eat cheese and trash-talk the Bachelor franchise with you. I promise.
Mess everywhere else: The reality is, mess is going to persistently follow you wherever you go, in all aspects of life, no matter how hard you try to force things into an orderly pattern. It's great to enjoy organization, planning ahead, and a clean space. But don't let that deprive you of the spontaneous, messy, delightful moments of life. This also means you might need to set some boundaries that allow you to enjoy this messy life. Protect your free time, say no to some commitments so that you leave time for others. When you feel yourself getting grumpy at people, set a boundary that is kind to both yourself and to the person or people that are irritating you - sometimes giving yourself space is actually the kind thing to do. A perfect example: last week I told my students that I would grant requested extensions on a particular assignment but said I wouldn't be replying to individual emails about said extensions. This was kind to both the students and to me - I gave them the flexibility that they needed (and that I promised), but I protected my own sanity by not spending hours responding personally to each request. It gave me a little free time, in fact, to write this and to think about how creating space for mess and spontaneity can go hand in hand with setting good boundaries and being kind to yourself and to others.
All this is to say, have a delightful, messy weekend, friends!
Mess at home: Some of us are neat-freaks. I realize this isn't everyone, but if you prefer a perfectly ordered house, then it can be really hard to relax enough to go to sleep with dirty laundry on the floor, or to have people over when you haven't vacuumed in 2 weeks. LET IT GO. At least for now. Let yourself go to bed with dirty dishes every once in awhile (as long as your roommate can handle it and you don't get ants). And definitely allow yourself to enjoy some messy hospitality. What is messy hospitality, you ask? Messy hospitality is the act of having people over and having fun, even when your house is a disaster zone. Don't wait for a perfect home before you enjoy your friends. The people who are your people don't care what your house looks like, they just want to eat cheese and trash-talk the Bachelor franchise with you. I promise.
Mess everywhere else: The reality is, mess is going to persistently follow you wherever you go, in all aspects of life, no matter how hard you try to force things into an orderly pattern. It's great to enjoy organization, planning ahead, and a clean space. But don't let that deprive you of the spontaneous, messy, delightful moments of life. This also means you might need to set some boundaries that allow you to enjoy this messy life. Protect your free time, say no to some commitments so that you leave time for others. When you feel yourself getting grumpy at people, set a boundary that is kind to both yourself and to the person or people that are irritating you - sometimes giving yourself space is actually the kind thing to do. A perfect example: last week I told my students that I would grant requested extensions on a particular assignment but said I wouldn't be replying to individual emails about said extensions. This was kind to both the students and to me - I gave them the flexibility that they needed (and that I promised), but I protected my own sanity by not spending hours responding personally to each request. It gave me a little free time, in fact, to write this and to think about how creating space for mess and spontaneity can go hand in hand with setting good boundaries and being kind to yourself and to others.
All this is to say, have a delightful, messy weekend, friends!
RSS Feed
