Lurking on my Books page is the promise of a book entitled How to Be a Bazzillionaire: Why You Don’t Have to Be a Rich Person to Live a Rich Life. While my focus is on writing fiction right now (you can go to http://sarashay.com for information about that) I do have hopes of one day writing it and offering it up to the world. It’s an expansion of the concept of Rich Living that I’ve talked about here, and I’ve expanded the aspects to seven different practices. They are as follows:
Sovereignty
Presence
Humility
Generosity
Curiosity
Playfulness
Pleasure
Just today, I finally figured out what sequence to put them all in. These aren’t exactly ranking things in order of importance as much as figuring out which chapter goes first in the book. Though there are some priorities–Sovereignty was originally the final chapter and then I realized it really needed to be first. I will be doing posts on each of these, so I’ll be explaining Sovereignty in more detail soon.
It seems to be an example of something I’ve been doing lately–rethinking what order to perform things in.
As a Catholic, I am a creature of ritual. Everything from the cycle of the Liturgical season to the order of the Mass follows a reliable pattern. I was able to follow along in a Mass celebrated entirely in Italian where the only words I understood where “Corpo di Cristo.” (Which were all I really needed to comprehend.) Living in that tradition gave my family and me a fondness for doing things in a certain way, such as driving down to St. Augustine every summer and effectively doing the same thing every day.
I cultivated habits in a similar spirit. Doing things in a certain order made them easier to do, especially when I was in the grip of bipolar depression. I’m quite sure many people are the same way with their habits. But recently, there are been a few habits that I’ve been taking a step back and thinking “Wait, why that way?”
Take housecleaning. (Condocleaning, technically, but let’s not get persnickety.) I live in a 675-square-foot condominium and every Saturday I try to clean it. For a long stretch, I used the Pomodoro Technique to time when I would work and when I would rest. From this I learned that the Pomodoro Technique is terrible for housecleaning. It breaks things up just when you’re getting into a groove and it doesn’t account for what happens when the dryer buzzes because Saturday is also laundry day. So I chucked it out completely. On top of that, I looked over the sequence I cleaned things in–kitchen, then bathroom, then bedroom, then living room. (I told you my place was small.) The bedroom’s the easiest. Why didn’t I save that one for last when my energy levels would be at my lowest? I pondered it and realized the reason–because the order formed a clockwise circle. That was really it.
Even the Church changes its rituals. I’m not old enough to remember Vatican II, but my parents are, and things were very different then. By modifying some of the externals, the Church was able to engage with the world as it was, not as it used to be. My family’s trip to St. Augustine has changed in the specifics over time, and won’t even be happening this year. There’s always room to make things new.
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