{"id":2818,"date":"2019-06-20T10:14:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T14:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soul-repairs.com\/blog\/?p=2818"},"modified":"2019-06-17T21:23:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T01:23:16","slug":"souls-are-like-garages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/20\/souls-are-like-garages\/","title":{"rendered":"Souls are Like Garages"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>On Garages: a Semi-Rant<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2820\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2820\" style=\"width: 350px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2820\" src=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-300x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"175\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-540x270.jpg 540w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2820\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The box on the lower left is happy, if upside down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A pet peeve of mine (Josh) is <em>messy garages<\/em>. I was ranting about this to Laine the other day, and an epiphany hit me.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Souls are like garages. Keep yours cleaned the f&amp;$# out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are not naturally highly organized people. This is not a rant\/post proposing that you itemize, alphabetize, and categorize every one of your possessions, towards living a better life. <strong>This is not that kind of post.<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2821\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2821\" style=\"width: 346px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2821\" src=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-2-300x174.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"346\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-2-300x174.jpg 300w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-2-768x444.jpg 768w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-2-467x270.jpg 467w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/messy-garage-2.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 346px) 100vw, 346px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2821\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At least this person made an alley through their stuff&#8230;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>However,\u00a0<em>your garage is made for a specific purpose<\/em>. We both live in Michigan. It gets <strong>cold<\/strong> here. If you have to park your car on the street, or in your driveway, your car gets covered in frost that has to be scraped off with one of the most annoying tools ever created. It also gets covered in snow when it inevitably snows, and regardless of snow or frost, it&#8217;s <strong>cold<\/strong> in the mornings.<\/p>\n<p>Your driveway is also the safest place for your friends and buddies to park when they come visit you &#8211; but if <em>you<\/em> have to park in the driveway, <em>they<\/em> have to park in the street.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you park in a garage, if you use the garage for its intended purpose, <strong>you avoid all of this pain.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Garages are for parking. They shouldn&#8217;t be filled with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cruft\">cruft<\/a> and detritus that you don&#8217;t need, you haven&#8217;t used in years, and you have no real plans to even <em>think<\/em> about.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Souls are Like Garages<\/h2>\n<p>Rant aside, I (Josh) do this too &#8211; I have a ton of stuff I keep around &#8220;because some day that one thing might happen and I&#8217;ll need it then.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2866\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2866\" style=\"width: 164px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2866\" src=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/sunshinewindow-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"164\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/sunshinewindow-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/sunshinewindow-178x270.jpg 178w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/sunshinewindow.jpg 379w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 164px) 100vw, 164px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2866\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Your soul was meant to be full of sunshine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>On another part of the scale, when Josh was putting together thoughts for this post, I (Laine) looked at him kind of confused and said that I just get rid of stuff as soon as it gets in my way. This is handy &#8211; I am a messy person, but my garage is NOT a mess. However, it also led to me losing my entire collection of CD&#8217;s the last time I moved&#8230;<em>thanks, Amazon streaming music <\/em><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"emoji\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/ptb.discordapp.com\/assets\/e9b114282c887f219e297d6cc7249363.svg\" alt=\":relieved:\" \/><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Most of stuff in a messy garage isn&#8217;t even <em>accessible<\/em>. It&#8217;s <strong>buried<\/strong>. It sits there, with no plan and no purpose &#8211; it just takes up space that&#8217;s <strong>supposed<\/strong> to be for something else. It&#8217;s loose ends, and unrealized value. It&#8217;s <em>unresolved intentions<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Your soul can become full of stuff too. As awful as stuffed messy garages are, stuffed messy <em>souls<\/em> are even worse. Your soul is meant to sing with joy, and be full of sunshine (or darkness, or whatever feels you&#8217;re feeling).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Your soul is meant to listen for, learn about, and focus on your <strong>purpose<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2865\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2865\" style=\"width: 193px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Strictly_Ballroom\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2865\" src=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/viverenmiedo-232x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"193\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/viverenmiedo-232x300.jpg 232w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/viverenmiedo-208x270.jpg 208w, https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/viverenmiedo.jpg 339w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 193px) 100vw, 193px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2865\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;A life lived in fear is a life half-lived,&#8221; from Lainie&#8217;s <strong>most favorite movie<\/strong>, Strictly Ballroom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But a bunch of old regrets, broken dreams, snapped relationships, and stabby worries can overwhelm <em>all<\/em> of that. We <a href=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/18\/your-fears-are-not-a-beacon\/\">hold on to these<\/a> because we think that <em>we might need them some day<\/em>. We use them as talismans for the things we&#8217;re afraid of.<\/p>\n<p>We think that if we can be aware of all of these things, and exert enough <a href=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/22\/the-illusion-of-control\/\">control<\/a> over them, then we can <em>do it better next time<\/em> &#8211; and we can keep from ever being hurt again.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We try to live without fear by fearing <strong>everything that&#8217;s ever scared us<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But&#8230;we know <em>because science<\/em> that that&#8217;s a bad plan &#8211; mostly because it\u00a0<em>doesn&#8217;t work<\/em>. Instead of never being scared, we end up\u00a0<em>literally always scared<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h2>So therefore&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Clean out your soul<\/strong>. Look at what&#8217;s keeping you from being free and happy. It&#8217;s almost <em>never<\/em> the reality around you &#8211; it isn&#8217;t your job, or your relationships, or your circumstances. It isn&#8217;t the things that you think make you a victim. It&#8217;s the choices you make about each of those things, and the way that your particular broken places interact with them. It&#8217;s your worry, and your fear, and your attempts to control.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, though, you&#8217;ll clean out the stuff you can clean out, and you&#8217;ll find that you still have random crap in your soul &#8211; and <em>that<\/em> can mean that your reality <em>is<\/em> in some way part of the problem. If that happens, if your relationships or your job or <em>whatever<\/em> do actual damage to your soul&#8230;then it&#8217;s\u00a0time to take action to fix your reality.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/15\/ummm-i-have-a-question-actually-i-have-about-50\/\">Being a person is hard<\/a>. Souls take on damage, and they have scars, and they have jagged places that cause new damage every day. When we allow this damage to collect, we end up like a messy garage &#8211; we make it so that we can&#8217;t be used for <em>our<\/em> intended purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Garages: a Semi-Rant A pet peeve of mine (Josh) is messy garages. I was ranting about this to Laine the other day, and an epiphany hit me. Souls are like garages. Keep yours cleaned the f&amp;$# out. We are not naturally highly organized people. This is not a rant\/post proposing that you itemize, alphabetize, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/20\/souls-are-like-garages\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[73,114,55,144,133,134,145],"wf_post_folders":[],"coauthors":[11,26],"class_list":["post-2818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","tag-control","tag-fear","tag-just-science","tag-movie-quotes-as-wisdom","tag-rant","tag-soul","tag-strictly-ballroom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2818"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2920,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2818\/revisions\/2920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=2818"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soul-repairs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}