It just struck me.
Sitting a room alone, looking at the wall. There wasn’t anything happening – I had no powerful reason to stare at the wall in front of me, but it just happened at a time where the mind wonders. You know, where a speck of dust becomes the most interesting thing in the world. Some say that is when you come up with ideas that are earth shattering – but for me I end up recalling a brutal time in my life or how the Nationals need to win the next few.
But as it happened it struck me. The idea of the mundane is a gateway to understanding. That even something so simple, something like sweeping the floor, can create a profound lesson that carries for the rest of ones life.
For example, sweeping the floor. When you instruct someone to sweep the floor, they take a broom and run it across, sliding it from side to side, hoping to get everything they see up. When they get to a place of satisfaction, they put the broom up and go about their day. If you ask them to sweep that very floor the next day, they find a little more dirt. Ask again, they find more dirt. Eventually they will clean every speck of dirt when they sweep. This is where the fun begins.
If I’m asked to sweep a floor in this condition, I would be angry. I would spot sweep, the kind of sweeping where you gingerly run the broom over the floor in a few spots, and claim your prize. The floor is swept anyway, how can anyone know. However, if I continue to sweep the floor, and do it in earnest, I have no choice but to understand what I am sweeping. I have to see the room. I get to know it in its best state. I begin to care about what I see. Even a feather becomes offensive. I get to know the broom, the dustpan,and the time I am sweeping. I get to reach peace through, knowing the routine is the same.
The idea isn’t to sweep when its dirty to clean it, the most profound thing to do is to sweep after its clean. The boring, mundane thing keeps us locked in and eventually gets us aware.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 