Hal and I have been enjoying all our new things. [1]

I’ve started buying white linens so that I can add a little bleach to the wash. And so that when my bathroom wash clothes get moldy, I am forced to throw them away because I can’t ignore what I can see. Oh, the joys of cleaning. I do enjoy cleaning. Parts of it, anyway.

Hal and I had a conversation recently about How Much Mess can we tolerate. We have different tolerances. We agreed to cut each other some slack and do what *we* can do without expecting *the other person* to do the same. We have always been relaxed about the mess (towards one another), but its cool to talk about it and know what is going on with the other person when they see caked on food all over the highchair or kitchen counter. We have both accepted that having a messy home is part of the family package.

I also recently learned about my husband - who I’ve been with for 14 years - that he prefers to watch TV at night with the lights on. Because that is how he grew up watching TV at night with his family. Mine always had the lights off.

I’ve started to chill out about the night time noise with the TV. I realized that if the kids grow up sleeping with noise, they are learning to sleep through it. I’ve always known that its not necessary to walk on tipy-toes with a new baby, in fact it is recommended (somewhere that I’ve read) to NOT make an effort to be quiet with a baby in the house. Because then, they will NEED quiet to sleep. That information just recently “clicked” in my head and I’m able to apply it on some level to my own family. A lot of it has to do with thinking about how LOUD Hal’s mom is, and how he managed to grow up and still sleep. So now I can stop getting all uptight anytime I can actually hear the TV whilst watching it.

I’ve come to accept that knowledge doesn’t fall on a scale. At least, I don’t feel it does. I am (as a knee-jerk reaction) opposed to elitism in any field of thought/work/ect. It occurred to me that, as Hal put it so fucking eloquently, I don’t discriminate between modes of knowledge. This, most recently for me, is being applied to spirituality.

While my cultural upbringing has me often feeling that *my way* of looking at the world and spirituality is somehow on a “higher” level than the hate-filled religious type people (or religious people in general)… ironically placing myself on the upper echelons of the "quality hierarchy" of spirituality... because in our world, humans seem to need a systematic hierarchy to be applied to everything (quality of movies, thinking, education, ect.)… and because to survive in our world I have to abide on some level to these systems… and I tend to box all things into good to not so good and compare… I have come to the conclusion that there is no system of quality that applies to spiritual beliefs.

All of it, the good the bad the ugly the hateful the shitty, its all a part of our free will. And I do love my free will. Therefore, if I have to think in terms of good and bad, it can all be *right*. Because for those who are in those modes of hate and anger and ugly, that is where they choose to be. Its where they NEED to be. As fucked up as it is, it makes sense to me. I don’t think anyone chooses to be hurt, but someone did choose to hurt them and what we do with our pain is part of our free will.

Totally rambling here, but I’m feeling like less of a Smarty when it comes to spirituality and more in tuned with my own path in life. In other words, I feel free to stop comparing and sizing up my quality of life with others, because I am just how I’m suppose to be. Right where I am.

Trite, I know. But what a fucking revelation to me.

I think this blog entry motivated my thoughts on this shit. Its titled, "Follow Your Own Bliss,," written by one of my favorite bloggers who I consider to be an "on-line friend." Strange Quark says, Follow Your Own Bliss:

I know that we don't get accurate world news, but I've noticed that most people don't know what's going on locally, in their own communities either. It's so hard to figure out what my city is doing, where all the farmers markets are, what changes are being implemented in my neighborhood and my city, where to find local shops, etc... and we only have so much time.

I also know there are a shitload of crappy corporations out there, and too much non-food on our shelves, and all other sorts of things for us to worry about, as women, mamas and people.

Joseph Campbell has that wonderful quote, "follow your own bliss." He said this in his interview where he was describing something to the effect that the whole world would be fine if everyone would reach deep inside and figure out what they are here for and what they need to do. If they then continued to follow that bliss, their own personal bliss, then there would be no holes in the world, because everything would be filled.

Instead, many people go around doing what they think other people want them to do, trying to figure out what's wrong in the world -- or what's going on 180 degrees around the globe, and the thing is that if we save our pennies, or mail our food to those people, etc... all we are doing is trying to delay some guilt that we feel, which really will never go away until we follow our own true purpose.

So, I dunno...but I don't think you need to do a bunch of research and be up on the news in Kenya and France, necessarily. Unless that's your personal calling, cause you've got something to create with that information. I think you know, inside, what you can really do to make this world a better place, and I bet it's something that you can do in your very town, and maybe in your very house.

And I don't know if for a fact, but I'd be willing to be that Gloria Steinem used disposable pads. I bet that Joan of Arc bought the cheapest flour for her bread and didn't go out of her way to spend too much time contemplating it. I'm sure that Emily Dickinson ate way too much sugar and Helen Keller probably shopped at some fucked up places, cause she had no idea what she was wearing. Amelia Earhart probably ate donuts filled with white sugar and flour as she crossed the Atlantic, and she certainly burned up a shitload of fuel and increased global warming as she did it.

Mother Teresa didn't talk to her own mother, and she gave money to Ronald Reagan and other conservative assholes. I'm thinking that Rosa Parks didn't eat all organic, and her house probably wasn't spotless, and she just might have washed her hair with cheap shampoo. I know Billy Holiday had a serious drug problem, and Marilyn Monroe used make-up that was tested on animals. And on and on...

So, I guess, my whole thing here is that we don't have to be perfect, we don't have to research everything, and while those things are good sometimes, I think if you find your bliss -- that thing that really makes you feel beautiful and wonderful inside, and you follow that...no research is necessary, cause you know what you need to do to change the world, even if that means you do it through one person, and when people look back at the change you made, they aren't going to remember where you shopped, or what you ate.

If we all just took our energies and turned it on ourselves, this world would be all of us, following our own purpose, and even though we'd bump into each other from time to time, I don't think there would be so much worry and guilt... but these are just some thoughts.

Excuse me now, for I need to go play with my children.