Clear Your Space...Clear Your Mind #14

Chapter 8 ~ Autumn

“Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest smile.”

                      - William Cullen Bryant

In the Jewish faith the calendar year starts in September. It has always made perfect sense to me to sound in the New Year at the same time all the little children were heading back to school. New teachers, new classes, new friends, new school supplies, New Year.  The fact that Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, coincides with this fresh chapter in the lives of families just feels logical.  Starting the New Year on Ja. 1, in the midst of winter, is less like a renewal and more like, well, more of the same—long, dark cold nights.

The heralding in of this new period also dovetails with Mother Nature’s spectacle: autumn. We are privileged to witness this cornucopia of color—so rich and alive, that many of us attempt to replicate it on our dining room tables. It is a season for giving thanks. We are asked to be appreciative and grateful for the abundance that surrounds us, which is not terribly difficult to do.  It’s incredible to watch the colors change without any help or guidance from us humans. How do they do that?  The opulence is astounding, and it inspires poets, painters, and yes, even organizers.

Spring is long gone. The freshness that accompanies the re-birth of Mother Earth is well behind us. Winter is not far off, the season of hibernating and spending many days and nights indoors. Autumn is a time for reaping what you have sown:  bringing in the bounty. But what are the rewards of autumn if you are not a farmer?  If you cannot usher in the harvest how do you symbolically ring in the vividness that signifies the fall?  

Autumn is a good time to re-evaluate your space before you are stuck inside. It could be your one last prospect to prepare before the arrival of those shorter colder days. I like to think of this season as a prompt to take a good look at how your space might cultivate your life force. 

Many times we are oblivious to the things in our home. Day in and day out we walk by a crack in a window or a wall-hanging passed down from Grandma and don’t even notice it. We’ve grown used to the item’s presence and we easily forget about it. We have little conscious thought as to how it makes us feel, never mind the metaphoric essence it personifies. 

Have you ever walked by something in your home, stopped, and really looked at it, asking yourself,

             “How does this make me feel?” 

             “Does it please me?”

             “Am I bored with it?”

             “Does it make me happy?”

             “Do I hate it?”

It is an intriguing experiment, one I highly recommend you try. All things we surround ourselves with have implications. Literally, those “things” represent a time in history, an attitude, or a perspective, and consequently they invoke feelings, sending a message not only to your subconscious mind, but out there to the universe. Most of us walk around with blinders on. When it comes to the subtleties of our environments, like a chipped vase, a torn screen, or a rusty door knob, we often ignore it. In time we stop noticing and it just fades into the background.  

A friend of mine divorced her husband because he could not be monogamous.  When he finally left she began going through their bedroom and noticed, really for the first time, one of the pictures they had hanging on the wall. The framed artwork depicted a man in a harem, surrounded by women, fawning all over him.  Coincidence? She got rid of that picture pretty quickly.

How about an image of a turbulent river with dark and stormy clouds hanging over your bed? Will that insure a restful night’s sleep? 

I was consulting with a woman who wanted a relationship. Apparently one of the top three reasons someone calls in a Feng Shui expert is to find their soulmate.  She felt strongly that she was ready for a loving and committed union with a man and wanted to use Feng Shui to help her. With that in mind, we toured her apartment. All the while I’m looking for ways to incorporate this soon-to-be lover into her life. 

As I viewed each room I noted the majority of the artwork contained single women with expressions of introspection or even sadness. One picture in particular had a lone maiden stooped over, lugging water jugs on her shoulders. She was toiling and sweating and if there was a man in her life, he was probably out hunting.  There were no men anywhere. How fascinating it was that the one thing she desired most was not represented in her space in any way. 

The icing on the cake was her bedroom, the place where romance rules.  There was one end table, one lamp, and on the wall a large antique oil painting of a woman from the Victorian Era standing by herself. The woman was, in a word, severe, certainly a sign of her prudish times. The essence in this room was of singleness. It was as if the room was saying, “This is my space, for me alone;  there’s no room for anyone else here.” 

Naturally, the first thing that had to go was the painting. I suggested she relocate it. She was opposed. I explained my theory. She made it clear she had just purchased it several weeks earlier at an antique marketplace and loved it.  “And besides, it fits so well with the style and period of my bedroom furniture,” she clarified. All of that was true. But I told her when a bedroom showcases an unhappy single woman it is no place to bring a new love and certainly not the message she wants to be sending out there to the world. A sidebar here - the face on the woman was honestly frightening.

I suggested her second bedroom, the one she was using as a home office, would be a more appropriate spot for all her single women. If her desire for a man was sincere she needed her home to be a place that was inviting, a setting allowing him in, physically, emotionally and metaphorically.  

She adored her painting and no amount of reasoning on my part was going to sway her or change her mind. It was staying in the bedroom, period, point blank. I had to get creative. I looked up for inspiration and then the idea came, “Well,” I said, "If you don’t want to move the painting out of your bedroom, then find it a mate.”  We both smiled. Now she had a mission; to find her painting a boyfriend. Need I say she found her single Victorian woman a partner and soon thereafter found one for herself? Well, she did, and she was married a year later.

...to be continued