I have a room upstairs in my house that we call the Adventurers Room. When we travel we pick up knick knacks and display them here. There’s stuff like replicas of the Rosetta Stone and Stonehenge (not full size), Hawaiian keep-sakes, Egyptian papyrus art, a pirate skull with crossed swords, and certificates of named stars for my children. My parents have also contributed items such a Persian battle axe, a whale bone Indonesian blow dart gun (that really works…on sisters and overstuffed chairs!), and an Australian boomerang. Oddly enough, one of my prized possessions is a small cap, much like a colorful yamaka, that I got when I was 6 while on vacation in Iran of all places. Iran was a very safe place to go in 1967. Now they jail Christians. Anyway, it really is a very neat room to spend time in looking over the bits of history and culture. And in the corner of the room is…the black hole, aka the closet.
The black hole was not always as such. When we moved in 1998 I built shelves so that everything could remain well organized…a place for everything and everything in its place. About 7 years ago I reorganized the black hole. Ah! It is a good feeling when you unclutter clutter. And now, 7 years later, it is a black hole again. Things just find their way in there, initially in the right place, but soon the right place doesn’t have enough room for the right stuff. And that stuff has to go somewhere. So it goes in some other stuff’s place mixing stuff with stuff. The horror! And pretty soon it just doesn’t matter where stuff goes as long as it goes somewhere in the black hole. Just put it away. I don’t want guests to see it. I will clean it up later!!
Perhaps you have your own black hole in your house, or two or three of them. You might even have the ubiquitous “junk drawer” or two or three of them as well. Oh, what about the junk cabinet. The junk shelf. Let’s not talk about the garage. Life is busy and we all have a lot to do. Things just get put off. In reality we all have a bunch of black holes where things are set aside waiting to be sorted out later. In reality it’s really not that big a deal. So I have a junk closet. So what. It’s just a bunch of stuff. My kids can sort through it when I die. I joke that I will put a note in my sock drawer for my kids to find that reads, “Now you know what it feels like to pick up after someone.” Would that be funny or morbid? I’m not sure yet.
Anyway, household black holes represent the places where we put stuff until we can get around to organizing and sorting that stuff. By that train of thought then your body is a black hole. You put ice cream or other goodies in it that sit on your waistline until you can get around to sorting out that extra fat. You store bacon in the fatty deposits of your arteries until…well, until you have a heart attack, stroke, or angioplasty. You store football and soccer injuries in the joints until they become arthritic and need replacement. You store whiplash in your neck until you need it fused. Indeed, your body is your walking talking black hole that you carry around with you until it gets overstuffed, until its shelves break down, until the doors are falling off the hinges.
We all get one body to make last a lifetime, and it will do just that and no more. One lifetime. I will challenge you to take the rest of your life to clean up your black holes and keep them from filling up again. Pick one thing and clean it out. Once it’s cleaned out pick another thing, and then another, and then another, just one more thing at a time until health and mobility are ensured not just for a lifetime, but for a long lifetime.
The black hole was not always as such. When we moved in 1998 I built shelves so that everything could remain well organized…a place for everything and everything in its place. About 7 years ago I reorganized the black hole. Ah! It is a good feeling when you unclutter clutter. And now, 7 years later, it is a black hole again. Things just find their way in there, initially in the right place, but soon the right place doesn’t have enough room for the right stuff. And that stuff has to go somewhere. So it goes in some other stuff’s place mixing stuff with stuff. The horror! And pretty soon it just doesn’t matter where stuff goes as long as it goes somewhere in the black hole. Just put it away. I don’t want guests to see it. I will clean it up later!!
Perhaps you have your own black hole in your house, or two or three of them. You might even have the ubiquitous “junk drawer” or two or three of them as well. Oh, what about the junk cabinet. The junk shelf. Let’s not talk about the garage. Life is busy and we all have a lot to do. Things just get put off. In reality we all have a bunch of black holes where things are set aside waiting to be sorted out later. In reality it’s really not that big a deal. So I have a junk closet. So what. It’s just a bunch of stuff. My kids can sort through it when I die. I joke that I will put a note in my sock drawer for my kids to find that reads, “Now you know what it feels like to pick up after someone.” Would that be funny or morbid? I’m not sure yet.
Anyway, household black holes represent the places where we put stuff until we can get around to organizing and sorting that stuff. By that train of thought then your body is a black hole. You put ice cream or other goodies in it that sit on your waistline until you can get around to sorting out that extra fat. You store bacon in the fatty deposits of your arteries until…well, until you have a heart attack, stroke, or angioplasty. You store football and soccer injuries in the joints until they become arthritic and need replacement. You store whiplash in your neck until you need it fused. Indeed, your body is your walking talking black hole that you carry around with you until it gets overstuffed, until its shelves break down, until the doors are falling off the hinges.
We all get one body to make last a lifetime, and it will do just that and no more. One lifetime. I will challenge you to take the rest of your life to clean up your black holes and keep them from filling up again. Pick one thing and clean it out. Once it’s cleaned out pick another thing, and then another, and then another, just one more thing at a time until health and mobility are ensured not just for a lifetime, but for a long lifetime.