The Art of Arranging By Scattering

Growing up there was an evil I witnessed under the sun. It occurred whenever my mother would decide to arrange the house. Now you must understand that I arranged the house basically every day, but in that blue moon that my mother decided to do so herself, I was subjected to more toil and rigor than when I did it myself. My mother’s method was to arrange the house by first of all scattering it even more. She scattered our stacks of CDs on the floor, threw documents into the air like graduation hats, she brought out dishes and pots long since condemned, and no stone was left unturned. Neatness was Humpty Dumpty, and whilst I was content to simply polish his fragile shell, my mother would push him over the wall, have him shatter to a billion different pieces, and then enjoin me in the tedious task of putting him back together again.

Years later, today I stared at a pile of books, handouts and documents in a corner of my room. They were there because I needed them for an exam. But now that exam is passed, and I told myself I would get rid of all of them as soon as that was the case. But lo and behold old habits die hard. I simply can’t bring myself to get rid of anything. This era of my life is passed, I will never write any of those exams again (NEVER. SATAN YOU HEAR ME? NEVER!!!) But out of some well-informed laziness I would probably just find a way to hide them somewhere. Which is what we all do with our issues. We say we are moving on, but forget that to move on, to clean up a life-you have to leave some things behind, throw some thing’s away.


I know it’s tempting, to sweep around our comfort zone, not lift up the couch or the bed so we can get rid of the dirt underneath, but one day that comfort zone will shift, and you will find that a lot of problems you thought were buried, were simply lying beneath something removable. Don’t move on and leave the next resident of your apartment to clean up the mess you made, cleanliness is next to godliness. I’m not preaching this because I practice it. I’m preaching it because it’s the truth. Be like my mother, crumple up that piece of paper, no matter how important it looks and throw it away, else one day, you’ll end up with a heap of issues, like this.

P.S Give me a break conscience, this is not hypocritical. Verily verily I say unto you that my juniors would need these materials someday, what kind of elder would I be with nothing to pass along as others passed them along to me? Shout out to Mama Ebube.