Sorting Things Out

Each day of life is like going through your closet. You sort out what you need and what you can toss. Stay­ing sane means hav­ing ideas that work. It also means elim­i­nat­ing self-defeating thoughts and view­points. What we choose to use gets stronger. Per­spec­tives are like mus­cles. The ones you work strengthen. The ones you ignore atro­phy. It is a pretty sim­ple process. Some thoughts fit well — oth­ers are awk­ward or unwork­able and get pushed to the back.
I had a coun­sel­ing teacher that had a say­ing: “Sep­a­rate the issues.” That is not hard to under­stand. Do not let your thoughts run together like a pile of clothes in the bot­tom of your men­tal closet. Good men­tal health has some inner bound­aries. Ideas have to have room to breathe. They need to hang on their own. Con­fu­sion is when it all runs together. You can hear it in the sto­ries of the vil­lage idiot. For them, there is no sep­a­ra­tion in the past, present, or future. These poor peo­ple live drown­ing in their own ocean of undif­fer­en­ti­ated thoughts.
Other peo­ple seek to rule by con­fu­sion. Be care­ful of them. Their thoughts are in pack­age form. Their state­ments are loaded with double-binds and catch-all phrases. Talk­ing with them is dif­fi­cult. They are eas­ily offended. It is also dif­fi­cult to sort out exactly what they are try­ing to say. Be care­ful of their gen­er­al­i­ties. You may be lumped into one of them.
San­ity is expressed in pretty sim­ple terms. Peo­ple that know what they want and are able to express those wants accu­rately are easy com­pany. They are in touch with them­selves. The dif­fi­cult ones are overly com­plex. They can­not dis­cern who they are or what they want. Be care­ful. They some­times try to push those tasks onto you. You can­not do their men­tal house­keep­ing for them. What­ever you advise will be met with end­less con­tra­dic­tions.
The say­ings of Jesus are actu­ally pretty clear and sim­ple, but they are very chal­leng­ing and dif­fi­cult to do with any con­sis­tency. His para­bles are based in com­mon actions, but with enlight­en­ing insights. Unlike his intel­lec­tual oppo­nents, he stayed with the basics with­out clut­ter­ing them with pedan­tic triv­i­al­i­ties. He sorted through vol­umes of sto­ries and teach­ings and orga­nized his per­spec­tives around this key con­cept in his men­tal closet: lov­ing God, neigh­bor, and self. He had life sorted out pretty well.