Is it time to purge your life pantry?

What's in your life cupboard and is it time for the purge?

Aug 29, 2022

Don’t like reading? Allow me to read it to you 👈

Open the door. Put your trembling hand to the chrome of your handle and yank. Expose the contents of your heart in the kitchen of your world and prepare for the cleansing. Open the door.

Open it wide. Push it to the limit of its hinges and give good access. Don’t stop until you hear the creak of forgiveness and compliance. The acceptance of its role on this, your audit day. Open it wide.

Look to the shelves. What do you see? Expired cans and weevil empires? Preserved forms of wicked fruits and pickled dreams? Cracked shells and empty vessels? Dented can collards? Look to the shelves.

Know your dates. Hold them to the steel of your narrowed-eye scrutiny. Be wary of the manufactured peace of printed witness, etched by encounters and solidified by ink. Numbers and codes that tell you your limits, where their clock is in your story, and how the sequence must progress. Heave what is of no use—heave it to the horizon. No validity, no freshness, no flavor. Time’s up! Save your love for the unexpired. Know your dates.

Spice is life. Spin lazy Susan, spin fast, and spin free. Check for kick, check for taste, check for texture. Ask yourself: Is this friendship an expired rub? Does this love animate with anise? Is THEIR salt in MY wound? Bitter, sour, earthy, hot. Search for treasonous seasonings. Spin Susan. Spin until only supporting flavors remain. Spice is life.

Watch for scuttlers. Be wary of winged watchmen who claim only to be flybys but feed on your energy stores. Swing for the roaches, close the mouths of moths, and do more than rant at the meanderings of ants. Watch for the scuttle.

Eliminate odors. Catch the whiff of decay in mason jars like malodorous fireflies and release it to your neighbor’s yard. Blow your trumpet to the hunt of the pungent. Do not allow reeks to consume you, nor fog your mood moors with their arcane and destructive aromas. There is no fetor worth the offense, no stink worth the loss of the joint. Leave no trace of scent that cannot be identified and enjoyed. Eliminate odors.

Break up with rats. Everyone has rats, chewing on exposed and tender wires, nibbling at the corners of precious packets. Accept no holes in your emotional wares, no whisker pricks in your cocoas. No disease or fleas in the pantry of your psyche. Break up with rats.

Check for leaks. In love. In hope. In the very ingredients of your magnificent existence. Are your lids on tight? Are the jars bright and vibrant? Are your seals still intact? Check for leaks.

Explore dark corners. Shadows love to hide surprises with their molds and goo and schmear. The diseases of our minds are held in cupboard corners, shying from the light but growing stronger than the sun. The stores are all open and darkness fills the void. Blind it with your self-awareness beam. Explore dark corners.

Dust the shelves. For footprints in flours, drawn-out drama in your spelts. Evidence of unwanted meddling in the staples of your life, sabotaging your yeasts. You must rise. You will rise. You will have a crust that, upon knocking, resounds with a sonorous tone. Your center will be warm and soft and properly baked. Brush off your apron and get ready. Dust the shelves.

Honey. Hold your honey to the light. Golden and sealed. Dribbly and fine. Or candied and gone? Oh, Honey.

Who’s in your cupboard? Why, and who, and what for? Shelf space is a gift—a precious resource, infinite at the start and limited near the end. No room for “on sale.” No space for the “maybe try” or “one day.” You’ve got vittles to be whittled. Milk that’s lived long but must now be gone. Take stock of your stocks, I say. Who’s in your cupboard?

Clean out your pantry. Remove from your life the expired relationships, the stale taste-makers, the damaged cans of potential heartache that have lost their labels to the storm. Leave only what brings sustenance, nutrition, and joy. Leave only what you need to survive and thrive in an emergency of pain and comfort, in a time of stress and heartache, and in a period of mourning. Leave only love. Clean out your pantry.

No bad ingredients. No bad meals.

Yours in tiny thought,

Janeen

This week’s amends…

“Gather friends and feed them, laugh in the face of calamity, and cut out all the things––people, jobs, body parts––that no longer serve you.”
- Nora Ephron

From “Three Rules for Middle-Aged Happiness” in The Atlantic