A Road Less Travelled

There is something refreshing and heartening about rearranging furniture. The focus of the room shifts as it various parts are moved around. Dirt that went long unseen, but always felt is cleaned up and the room has more space to breathe. The sun shines into the room in unfamiliar ways and you find yourself seeing each piece of furniture differently. Familiar patterns are disrupted which requires you to see again with no assumptions.

Rearranging is tiring, too. There’s all the dirt and stuff that you could ignore as long as you didn’t have to look at it. It had lain in hiding. You couldn’t see it, but you could feel it was there. And now it’s out in the open and someone has to deal with it, that person most likely being you. If you’d never done anything that dirt could have lain there forever, but new perspective usually brings new dirt to life. If you do the hard work and clean it all away you’ll be able to sit in the clean room watching the light play on the furniture in new and unexpected ways. The ending is great, but that first step is always the hardest.

Of course, it doesn’t take much time before the change becomes normal, the newness accepted and the differences assumed. But for a moment you can see the room through new eyes and appreciate that it’s not how you expected it to be. It’s that moment that I sweep for.