Mother nature has flawless systems. Which makes sense since she invented them. Ecosystems, nervous systems... as the progenitor of everything that is and of this Earth, all things are designed in the spirit of sustainability.
Nothing is wasted, nothing is lost.
Life in service to Life in service to Life in service to Life...

This can be a helpful thing to remember when dealing with anything that requires "systematizing" or "organization" or locating that sometimes nebulous grail of Clarity within our lives and in our work- which is one of my favorite pursuits.

Cutting through clutter rhymes with cutting through butter and the imagery of both makes me salivate the same. The good news is that we're surrounded by templates for sustainable systems made by the master architect herself.
(Themselves? I get the sense that nature is gender non-binary.)

Enter: the glorious system of a lifespan.
The lifespan of all things can be summed up in three parts:
Arising. Maintaining. Dissolving.

This goes for the literal lifespan of organic matter — plants, animals, you, me.
As well as the lifespan of manufactured and ephemeral phenomenon — our thoughts and feelings, cultural norms, your favorite little black dress that hit it’s peak in 2007 and is now threadbare in the storage closet.
Shredded, but full of memories.

In the Arising phase, the germinated seed begins to sprout and push through the soil towards the light.
The dots connect to form something new— an insight. A cohesive idea.
Raw materials are blended together to make something that didn’t previously exist.

In the Dissolving phase, there’s a break down of what was once robust and seemingly solid.

This could be as monumental as shifting a once unquestioned cultural norm -- slavery abolished, travel by horseback made obsolete-- or as small as your cellular walls disintegrating, as fleeting as the thought that you just had.

Everything that arises eventually dissolves.
This is the natural order of things and Momma Nature has had billions of years to perfect her/their systems.

The stage that we’re usually relating to things in is the “Maintaining” stage of the lifespan — so called, because in order for anything function, it needs to be properly maintained.
This goes for your body, your possessions, your ideas, your relationships, your experiences, even your emotional state (bad moods included).
All things need to be fed, nurtured, perpetuated and sustained.
Or they will begin to dissolve to make room for new arising.
Life in service to Life.

When I see someone in a state of overwhelm (and experience it myself), the first thing I investigate is what is being MAINTAINED.
Because maintenance takes WORK.

Maintaining anything requires time, energy and space— sometimes physical or mental.
And we get overloaded.
This goes for the upkeep + organization of possessions that we own, the obligations, responsibilities, and commitments we’ve said yes to, the human relationships we’ve developed, every single one of our habits.

We barter our time and space to maintain what’s in our lives.

So my question for you is:
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY MAINTAINING?
And is it worth the effort?