Roads to Joy

I’ve spent the past afternoon and again this morning clearing up my laptop’s desktop. Not only does the struggling machine, uncluttered, work much faster now that all the accumulated images are whisked away, but the space is neat, tidy, and restful for my busy mind. The extended display is open for new material, while a series of files stacked neatly on the smaller, main display serves as a repository. If I’m conscientious, I can keep the extended display for daily work, and then tidy it up at the end of every work session.

I thought this snapshot, of the tram zipping smoothly through Corstorphine in Edinburgh at sunset, conveys something of that clearance feeling. Things work easier when the process is clean, when, even if metaphorically, the way through feels clear.

I felt the same way when our loft clearance began to show progress, and that progress spurs me on to get the job finished. Slowly and surely we shall clear out all the accumulation of the past decades and reach some kind of open space nirvana. Ideally, the memories will be salvaged while the detritus is discarded.

But the ability to work, for me, also demands a space that I can call my own, and our current downsizing adventure means that I have only a tiny corner of the living room in which to work. Perhaps one day we might invest in the increasingly popular garden office units; perhaps not.

No matter what sort of physical environment we do eventually develop, for crafts and hobbies, in a sort of final permanence to accommodate our waning years, as long as we have a clear sight of the way forward, a clean track ahead, we’ll be laughing.

And laughter, as the Reader’s Digest regular feature had it, is the very best medicine of all.