Every two months or so, I clean my closet. It’s pristine. And, for about a grand total of four days, I maintain my effort. After that short grace period, the downhill descent begins. It’s a cycle, one whose rotations I have not quite mastered, and as of last weekend, I was still stuck in the last stage: complete dysfunction. 

Well on Sunday night, I decided to finally conquer it. The weeks had gone on to become months and I could no longer see my floor. And by the end of it, it hadn’t even cost me an hour. I had suffered a small fraction of my life knee deep in clean clothes only to resolve it within a matter of sixty minutes. 

There are a lot of things that I could resolve within this same sort of time frame. In sixty minutes I could study for a test, I could read a textbook, I could get volunteer hours. So many things I need to do and certainly could do in such little time with such relative ease. Yet in spite of this knowledge, I stay knee deep all the same. 

Sometimes, people just get stuck. I don’t think people talk about it openly enough. It’s so often labeled as lazy. Maybe laziness is a big part of it, I don’t know. I think indifference is the biggest facet, though.  

At a certain point, people give up trying. They resign themselves to the, as they see it, profound complexities of their situation, no matter how uncomplicated the resolution really is. 

I think a lot of people are prone to this misconception, that we can’t help our situation. Almost always, though, we completely can. I don’t know why this is such a difficult concept to grasp, but I guess perspective easily gets distorted when you’re shrouded by mess.

The status of my closet is a good representation of where I’m at. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a threshold on that pile of clothes. As if when the height reaches a certain line, I’ll suddenly say enough is enough. Sometimes this is the case, but oftentimes it’s not. I’d been wading through clothes for months before I drew the line. 

This isn’t really about something as insignificant as all that, though, it’s about the mindset that contributes to it. The mindset that permeates all aspects of life, from school to work to even the cleanliness of your closet. Do what you can, then try a little more.