“Maybe I’ve always been more comfortable in chaos” Florence and the Machine.
Retail therapy is a term mainly used for consumers. Sometimes to clear our minds we take to something that gives our head breathing space. Shopping helps us to live in the moment. We fully focus on where we want to spend our money and how we wish to look. As an employee I know different.
My job role is called Recovery. It entails me to restore the clothes as they were and keeping the shop floor tidy. I have been placed on the shop floor for the past three years now. The clutter on the shop floor really does overwhelm me. The fast pace that is required plus the mix up of the clothes and then the battle of the difficult customers, can one challenge oneself.
If the customers didn’t make the mess, I would have nothing to do. If some never were difficult I wouldn’t challenge my inner peace. As a consequence of rails in front of mirrors, there are piles of clothes which I joke, you could walk on which pile up so high you could reach the stairways to heaven. It’s a test to live in the moment, I’ve come to know.
“Hush, be still.” And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”…
When I first started out three ago , I raged. With my mind eclipsed to seeing the bad, I use to say the job should be given to people who have come out of prison so they will not commit a crime because the job will depress them so much they will never commit a crime again. But now- I see it as a form of therapy. When I touch down and start my shift, sometimes I am not in the best of moods and sometimes my emotions run high. All that energy I put forth into that mess. I observed the bigger picture and this mess amounts to the thoughts; our thinking process. Sometimes we believe things because of what’s in front of us. Until we clear up, we see things for what they are. We return to our truest and simplest state of being. For us to live a way of life so authentic is when we put what needs to go where in its correct place. The Now is what keeps us peaceful. If only our minds came with us. When the silence is complete you reflect on all your efforts and remember how it looked before. My soul goes all quiet. When it went to ride the wave it realizes to fall back in its silence and let be. I cast myself into a new mode and by the end of my shift although I maybe tired. I’m refreshed.
Something about this mess makes me thankful. There is a sense of achievement that comes from it. In the depth of a mess on a fast moving floor, doing the same task over and over again, trying to reach perfection works as a form of meditation. This gives you a better focus. In the time frame you’re given with the labour you have to do, I’m sure like any job this sets us up to perform to the best of our abilities. It gives us healthy pressure to push forward to get the job done.
I may start my shift in a zone; I to be still. My minds set up its meeting place.
I fully recover.
Note to reader:
(Written two years ago. This piece was written for and published alongside many other articles by Infinity house magazine. https://blog.infinityhouse.org.uk/
I re post because after the magazine got re vamped, it removed all ninety two of my articles. Since then they have only managed to post five of them. So now, I re post: for reflection, for freedom of expression and to see how far I have travelled in writing and in self)
Once Upon A Human Experience. 