The Ness and Mess of Things

Today at four o'clock I was with a friend at the local Blenz Cafe. Cheryll and I decided that we would get together once a week at a cafe with WII FI and work on our computers. Its kind of a buddy system. It would have been the opportune time for me to blog here, but we ended up doing some technical type of stuff instead ... she has a much better grasp of webmastering and helped me with a few things I needed fixed on one of my sites.

I did get back on the computer when I got home though and funnily enough a muddle of thoughts flooded in. They were muddled because they really have nothing to do with each other, yet there they were, residing side by side in my brain. One of the thoughts I had muddled over before, many times; the other while not terribly original was awakened to my conscienceness by a newsletter I received from a friend. The dueling duo are ness and mess --- well at least they rhyme.

Mess you know, we all experience some at some point or another. We have a mess on the table, a mess in the room, a mess of some sort in our life. My friend Linda wrote that to live a life of richness, we need to deal with the messes in our lives. She recommended that we handle each mess one at a time and we need not be overly ambitious with any time frames as certain types of messes take longer to clean up than others.

I took her missive to heart, looked around my surroundings and decided that yes, I could certainly do with less mess. It was an easy decision. Job one: clean my desk. When I work I like to have my notes, my reference material, my books and files at my finger tips. Although I try to keep things sorted by some indescribable logic the reality is that it all gets jumbled and soon the desk is a mess. I decided to clean it all up --- put away the books, the magazines, the files and other material in their rightful places. It was surprising how much of the "reference material" was no such thing and quickly made its way to the recycling bin.

I work in blocks of time, each block dedicated to a different project so depending on the project, I now bring out the appropriate material, putting it away at the end of the block. I have been at it for a week now. Its been rough going but I am beginning to like the tidy appearance of my desk so much more and have rediscovered the beauty of mahogany. They say it takes 21 days to form a new habit ... methinks this one will take a tad longer and yet, and yet ... I somehow find that an uncluttered desk does indeed promote an uncluttered mind. There is hope.

Now to the ness of things --- aaaahhh, this is a somewhat more complicated thought. And what the heck is a "ness" you say. Well, it came to me many years ago in one of those discussion groups that tilt towards the philosophical, or at least the pretense of being so. Actually, I rather enjoyed those discussions as we dined on controversy the way a gourmet dines on caviar --- both are exhilirating.

...and then I asked at what point do we lose our ness? Eyes turned on me in puzzlement. I explored this new thought that just came to me explaining that while I have lived most of my life in Canada, was born and raised in Japan, I still felt a very strong tie to my ancestry, my Russianness, if you will. At that point I had never been to Russia, yet, somehow, I still felt very connected; culturally, physcially and spiritually. I could not even speak the language very well, you know kids type of patois. Yet there it was, the ness of being Russian.

Others picked up on my thought. Someone brought up President Kennedy who was one of the most iconic of American presidents, was third generation American at the very least, fought in WWII for the United States, yet was often referenced to his Irish roots, and indeed, there was a certain Irishness to the man.

I don't know, I think that the ness stays with us, becomes deep rooted in our psyche and informs us as to who we are. Its sort of like in our DNA. So, if we were able to dig deep down, I mean waaaay deep down into ourselves, whom might we discover ourselves to be? I think that the more appropriate question would be at what point does one ness overtake the last one?

...oh if at the Blenz Cafe, order their hot apple cider, does wonders for the soul on a blustery winter afternoon!