Mindful Living: Building a New House

When I moved into my first college apartment, I didn't even have a bed to sleep on. Naturally, the thing to do was get some cash from dad, and I did, talking him out of $130. I wandered down to the used furniture place just down my North Philadelphia street, and bought a queen-size mattress, an antique dresser with a two doored hutch on top, and a table (aka giant spool). Really, that was all a college girl could need, someplace to cuddle with my boyfriend, someplace to stuff the piles of consignment shop clothes, and someplace to pile the Chinese food containers. Maybe it was that inauspicious beginning that started me on many years of eclectic furniture, so that even as recently as eight years ago, I looked around my house and discovered, yes, that beautiful cherry antique dresser, but also five natural pine Aztec style bookcases, and one modern laminated beige computer desk. Fortunately the spool table had long since disappeared, along with the Chinese food boxes. The house looked like what it was, the result of a lot of years of taking whatever furniture came along.

We all build our lives in this haphazard way, starting when we go off into the world and buy our own bedding - even if it is on daddy's funds. Along the way I must have bought and sold five different sets of house furnishings from too-much-shining-required brass beds to California rattan sofas. Who was I then that I chose these things? It's too long ago to even know. When I looked around those eight years ago, I decided that this mixed-up batch of furniture didn't work anymore. For once, I wanted a home that was cohesive - something that expressed my growing personal identity. I sold almost everything - including that antique dresser - something I regret sometimes. I wouldn't say that today my home is a matched set of period pieces, but there is a gentle simplicity despite my inability to decide on one kind of wood. A cedar wardrobe - the magic kind, a sturdy and sexy dinner table from Pompanoosic Mills, a computer desk of maple with black inlay.

I guess you could say that my life has been a bit like my furniture. Lots of different stuff - all beautiful in it's own way. Some stuff I really love. Some stuff I care about, but which has lost its usefulness. Some stuff I don't much care for but don't have a replacement. I didn't really know that my life was filled with so many odd ducks, because I was used to it. I might never have known there was something different out there except for a terrible thing that happened to me about a year ago. It was a thing that would turn out to be a watershed for me, but that's really another story. I emerged from this bad thing pretty lost, pretty scared. Over the last year, I had to rebuild my life, nearly, just nearly, from scratch. Instead of having all the stuff in my life that was there just because it was, I decided to choose what would be in my life. I'd been donating my time to several groups for years and but they were groups I'd mostly lost my affiliation for. I had friends who I wasn't really friends with, only there wasn't any real reason to stop being friends. There were hobbies that had been grandfathered into my life, there because they were there. I stopped them too.

It took me a while to gather my wits, and then some more time to gather some flowers. This time I thought about each person, each hobby, each time consumption. As I started doing each group or friend or hobby, I thought about what it was, what it meant. I started saying "no" a lot more often, and had to say goodbye to a bunch of things. Not everyone has been happy with my decisions. But this wonderful change came out of all this choosing - a life that I truly want. All my energies are immersed in things of passion, and I can see this passion reflected in the people around me. Other people who are living in an authentic way are attracted to me, and our shared vision gives us courage even when life is shaky, as it nearly always is. Instead of being afraid of the constant waves of change around me, I've begun to feel safe riding on them, because for the first time I am living exactly as I am meant to, and giving all my energy and love to the things that matter most.

I thought that one day I'd have a suburban home, furnished by Ethan Allan in one long sweep of good taste. But this morning, the maple, cedar, and pine furniture that sit just 20 feet of my keyboard are more cohesive than any bunch of matching furniture sets. My eclectic nature may not, after all, have changed much from my youth when a giant spool was all I needed, but I have built a home and a life that fits together perfectly.

Copyright February, 2001