Nightly Efforts towards Order and Harmony
Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan - Diego Velázquez
“For a delight in bustling about is not industry – it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind. And a state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia… A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined to repose should be capable of action. Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both night and day.” – Seneca Letter III
Balance is key to sustained effort and discipline. I recently have been working to perfect my nightly routine. I find both my morning routine and nightly routine are somewhat difficult to keep set. I find that I have quite a variable wake up time and bedtime. Recently, I have been working to perfect just on aspect of my nightly routine so that I can build upon that for the next thing I do. I think this has been dubbed stacking or chaining activities and it is a strong way to build habits. I have been working to clean our apartment kitchen every night. It takes me about 20 minutes to clean and so far, until yesterday, I had completed it every night for the last two weeks. It was amazing the difference it made. First, I was able to finish every day with something I could say was perfect and complete. I collect all the used dishes and then I wash all of them by hand. Then I place the ones which can be washed further in the dishwasher. It may be redundant, but I’ve found it to be the only way I can get all the food residue off. Then I rinse the sink of all the residue and run the disposal. After that I take a soap and water solution and wipe down all the counters. I’ve added in clearing out old food from the fridge and refilling the filtered water container. When I’m done, the kitchen is spotless. I move papers to my desk and pick up all of Boston’s toys. It creates a sense of harmony and stillness in our apartment at the end of the day. It has a settling effect on my mind. The more I do it, the less time it takes, and the quicker harmony is restored. It is a good transition from day to night.
Yesterday I chose not to do my nightly routine of cleaning the kitchen due to simple laziness. This morning, I didn’t wake up to the harmony I wanted, I was frustrated by all the things in the kitchen from yesterday’s activities. I reflected in that moment on the power of discipline and how it brings harmony. There is a time to go to bed and a time to finish cleaning, there is a price to be paid to keep harmony. In science there is a law called the law of entropy which states, all systems trend to the state of lowest energy or greatest disorder. There is also a law which states a closed system has a set level of energy and matter and this must also stay constant. You and your environment are a system. There is a lowest energy state for you and for your environment. Disorder, chaos is the default for both your environment and your mind. If you allow your environment to become fully disordered, then it will require energy to return to an ordered state. You will have to give physical and mental energy to restore the harmonious and ordered state of your personal systems.
Small disorder requires little energy, larger disorder requires more. In my personal experience is seems that this is more of an exponential experience around the required energy than a linear experience. It seems to me to be because order and harmony require physical and mental energy to occur. In a somewhat metaphysical way, I think that body and spirit are required to order chaos. In my mind the equation of this relationship is something like Em(mental energy) and Ep(physical energy) – current chaos or C (disorder of your life) = O (level of order of your life).
(Em * Ep) – C = O
Therefore, your current physical and mental energies must equal the current chaos of your life to have order. The reacquisition of mental energy comes from sleep, reflection and meditation and self-education to build your mental energy further. The reacquisition of physical energy comes from sleep, diet and consistent exercise to build your work capacity further. Another way to increase your potential towards order and a harmony is to remove excess chaos from your life. You can do this by downsizing your closet, decreasing your time on social media and generally trending to an acceptable level of minimalism. I feel that latent chaos also acts as a black hole on your energy both mental and physical. Those unanswered emails tug small portions of mental energy from your mind and if enough builds up you can find yourself burned out, fatigued or in a bad way mentally or physically. Anyways, that was a rather technical explanation, but that’s how my mind sees it.
On this daily path, I’ve come to this conclusion, if you can spend the last seconds of your day creating order, then you will wake up to less chaos in your life and more recharging harmony. Coming back to cleaning my kitchen and to how I feel when I order my life in the evening. Once done, the drain on my energy disappears and order and harmony are restored. I can balance my life, reorganize my mind and then go and rest knowing I will wake to an ordered space. I’m going to continue to muse on the energy, order and chaos life equation. As always, let me know your thoughts and if there is another variable I should include in the comments, and as always, Stay awesome, Stay in the Gain!
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