Putting Something Away

Imagine for a moment, you’re standing in line at the grocery store. You have a cart full of stuff. Maybe this is all you need for the next two weeks. You walk through, pay for everything, and are on you way home. Somewhere between having paid for everything in your cart and arriving home, something catches your attention. The catch is powerful. So powerful that you simply walk away from your cart of stuff. By the time you remember the cart and the stuff in it, you are too far away to see it. What could this thing that captured your attention be?

Imaging for a moment you are in a room. The room is an unequivocable mess. Everything is everywhere. You decide in a particular moment of unrest that you must organize this room. In the midst of organizing some things are thrown away, some things are moved around, and some things are put away in a place out of your eye’s immediate view. Consider what it might be like to revisit this room a few months later. I propose that of all the things that have been put away, their pull on you would be diminished. You might not even remember them all.

Imagine for a moment that you are in training. You have decided to honor a deep desire to become an archer – one of considerable skill, say with a prospect of becoming an Olympian. This is an arduous process. You aren’t at your goal yet – far from it – but you are working towards it. There are specific things that you are focusing on in training. There are a few things that you know you will have to attend to even after what you are working on now is part of your skill set. You will have to wait for that time to come around. It feels like a never-ending journey. Learn this, then there is something else to learn. Yet, over time you can see your strength, stability, aim, and ability to hit the target where you want all increase.

These three analogies all aim to bring to light a part of some of what happens in the process of formation. There is the moment of being captured by a vision to such a degree that you simply leave what you have behind. There is the intentional reorganization of one’s life for the sake of a particular vision. There is the process of training to become a different kind of person. These aren’t everything, but they are a part of it. Of these analogies the one that we will explore here is the idea of putting things away.

I first encountered this idea while reading the letter to the Ephesians, in the Bible, the writing of which is attributed to Paul of Tarsus. While talking about what it is like to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ – a basic proposition of transformation for Paul – Paul writes, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

Bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking are not easy things to step away from, especially if they have been cultivated, practiced, or normalized. And yet, this is the advice. Let these things be put away from you. Allow these things to be placed away from you. Put them in a drawer, behind a door, in the tiny compartment under the desk. Put them in a place that minimizes their pull on you – away from you. And, stay away from them.

Paul goes further, as if to say putting something away is not enough. We need things – ideas, ways, visions – that we can put in place of all the things that we have put away. Here are the replacements then: be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving. Paul doubles down on the topic of forgiving, as if to know that the practice of forgiveness requires a model. How forgiving must we be? In the same manner and to the same extent that God has forgiven you. That is, of course, a phenomenal standard to aim towards, and does its own work within the person who is disposed to take it on as such an aim.

What does this actually look like in real life?

It is important to have a vision for the “how” of all of this. In your own life, for your own person, what does putting something away look like? It might look like avoiding something by literally moving yourself away from it – a conversation, a place, even a person. It might look like turning and walking in a different direction – from a particular situation or aim. It might look like allowing a thought to pass through one’s mind without holding it for contemplation – allowing a particular cultivated thought life to be put away. There are so many “how’s” that most processes feel abstract when described.

Abstract ideas like putting something away from you are meant to become concrete on the individual level. What does putting something away look like for you? This is the reason trustworthy guides, teachers, coaches, and fellow travelers are so important. When trying to implement an idea, the details have to correspond to the unique person that is doing the implementation.

Guides, teachers, and coaches all serve different roles as people who have wisdom through knowledge. They have gone before, and may be able to impart some direction that helps us avoid particular mistakes common to the pursuit we are on.

Fellow travelers can also impart direction, but from a position of comparing notes. All we need is a little experience to be able to compare notes. Maybe we’ve tried putting things away and have some knowledge that we can share. We may not have years behind us, multiple cases, or even some recognized authority. But our personal experience may be of value to our friends – and vice versa. This kind of sharing apart from the individual benefit actually builds a friendship.

Whether we’re pursuing this work with guides, teachers, coaches, or friends the idea that your application of the idea will look like what it needs to look like for you is important. Ultimately it is the work that you do to bring an idea to life in your own life that matters the most. It is this work that is key to the process of transformation. Without it putting something away from you has no power. It will forever remain a nice idea – a theory of change – without actual teeth. For the sake of the possibility of change, I hope that isn’t the case.