A Closet of One’s Own
How Marie Kondo Updated My Sitting Practice
I am a big fan of Marie Kondo’s 2014 book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. I know it works, but this time I learned something new.
Here at our home in Sanibel, Florida, I began the process last week in the usual way: I piled everything in my study, which I call The Lab, on the floor. This included a snarl of charging cables, microphones, a poem my late father wrote for me last Christmas, AA and AAA batteries, postage stamps, books, my journals, pens and styluses, four Kindles, slippers, an iPad, and a Freewrite Traveler.
The Gathering, as I think of it, resulted in a discouraging pile of questions. But here is the genius of the Kondo method: You touch each item and ask “Does this spark joy?” If the answer is yes, it stays. If no, it gets set aside for discarding or donating.
One thing that did not spark joy was my white zabuton, the large cushion on which I set my zafu for sitting meditation. This baffled me. I love my sitting gear, which also includes a candle and a bell. Why wouldn’t the white mat spark joy?
I’ve learned not to question the method, so I set the zabuton aside.
My favorite part of tidying up is finding places to put all of the things that spark joy. That pile fairly buzzes with energy. It seems as if each thing knows where it wants to go. The batteries go into a small cardboard box which I set on the top shelf in the closet. Headphones go on hooks inside the same closet. Stamps go in the desk drawer on the right side; Post-it notes go on the left side, with two pocket recorders.
I’d thought the closet would be overflowing when I was finished. Instead, the closet floor was clear except for my guitar in one corner. That’s when I learned something new about the Kondo method.
The zabuton that had not sparked joy when it was sitting in the middle of the room? It all but whispered its preferred new location: in the closet.
Now my Lab has a spacious, orderly feel to it. And when I do sitting meditation, I bow to the closet, take my seat inside on the zafu, light the candle and ring the bell three times to start the round.
Life-changing magic indeed.
