Going Into the Closet
Like yours and mine, Ellen G.’s closet is full of stuff. She’s spent her whole life storing things in there. A lot of the oldest stuff, some of the first items she stored away, she doesn’t even remember. And, until now, it’s been a decent system. Not great, but decent. She pulls things out as she needs them. She can’t exactly go right to the item she seeks, because it’s messy in there, but she believes she knows everything it contains, and it’s not spilling into the hallway, so she is fairly satisfied. It’s not until a major event happens, say a home invasion or a devastating tornado, that Ellen realizes her closet isn’t serving her well. She can’t take refuge in the closet, because there just isn’t room to do so. It’s the basis of the house, the part that still stands after the tornado. It’s also the most enclosed and secret. The home invader doesn’t even look there. The closet has become a life-or-death situation requiring her immediate attention. Thus, unprotected by the very room that is for her protection, she must act. She must go into the closet and look—really look—at what’s in there.
Ellen is shocked that so much of what is in her closet is other people’s stuff. In fact, a great majority of its contents don’t belong to Ellen at all. She’s the nice type, Ellen is, so she has never said no when someone wanted to store something there. She realizes now that she has stored things people didn’t even ask her to store. She would have seen this right off the bat, had she ever given her closet this much attention. Why is she keeping all this for other people? She gets right to work. The first thing she does is to remove anything that does not belong to her. Ellen feels lighter and lighter the more stuff she removes from her closet. This is so easy, she thinks. I will have this clean in no time!
Returning other people’s stuff to them is not as easy as she expects. They don’t want it back. They are repulsed. They claim never to have owned such stuff. But it’s yours, not mine—here. She tries to hand it back. They don’t take it. And, on top of that, they seem quite angry at her for attempting to return their stuff. They like their stuff stored in Ellen’s closet. It is an affront to them that she dare to give them their belongings. Again she pushes their stuff in their direction. She explains that, due to the life-or-death closet situation, she can no longer store these things. Surely they understand that it’s a matter of her life. Tornado, home invasion, etc. True friends care about their friends’ lives. But it doesn’t happen that way. They slam their doors. Flabbergasted, she leaves their stuff on the curbs in front of their houses. It’s all she can do. As she walks away, they rush to cover their stuff with big tarps so no one can see it.
Back at her closet, Ellen addresses what is left. Though it’s only about a quarter of what was, it’s still a lot. And it’s still messy. But it’s brighter, and she can more easily see things. She lives with it this way for a while. Life is much better. This is the goal, right? A closet filled with only her own things. Each time she pulls a necessary item from the closet, though, that feeling of lightness seems to fade just a little. It’s not lessening so much as remaining the same while her desire for even more lightness increases. But why? Perhaps a closet filled with her own stuff is not the goal, but a milestone on the way to something greater. And where does a thought like that come from? She intuits so many more possibilities now that there is some space in the closet. She must go into the closet again.
Inside, Ellen sees that, even though everything in the closet belongs to her, some of it she no longer wishes to own. This round of cleaning is tougher than the first. With the heat of such labor, she strips naked. The closet has a lot of partitions she herself built and was quite proud of at one time. But now, it is obvious that they are in the way. Where they once helped (back when the closet was full of other people’s stuff), they are now a hindrance. The partitions must go! The items must set directly next to and on top of each other. Items that don’t fit into this arrangement must be examined carefully before being kept or discarded. Fully half of the remaining items are judgment, repeating itself over and over. All that has to go. And why take up space with all these decisions, when a person needs only one . . . And then something catches her eye.
Ellen has been wrong about knowing everything that’s in her closet. Why, here, leaning against the back wall, is something that’s been hidden in the darkness for a long time. It would have remained here forever, had that major event (the tornado or home invasion) not set this whole project in motion. And it’s blocking her view of a lot of other stuff, too. It’s really dusty, and her first thought is to toss it in the trash without looking at it, but she is shamefully drawn to it. But then she scrapes off the dirt and sees it for what it really is, in the newfound light of the closet. She weeps. Then she is silent.
This next part takes courage: Now that she has identified the item, she brings it out of the closet into the daylight. It loses all substance then, and all power. She is no longer attached to it. Now it’s just a thing, a thing that used to be in her closet. Forgetting that she is naked, she walks outside into the sunlight and down to the curb and sets it out with the garbage. And boy, doing that once makes it so much easier to do it again and again, which she does.
This is a huge but necessary undertaking, and Ellen does it well. She changes, right down to the very words she utters. For what are words, but a code, an index to what’s in the closet. She thinks she’s done, because she can’t imagine being any happier. She lives this way for a while. Life is so much better! A delight! She has become quite intuitive, so she recognizes right away when her wonderful feelings subside. She knows this is another jumping-off point. She recognizes the need for growth. Back to the closet, then.
This time, Ellen’s attention is drawn, not to the contents of the closet, but their disarray. She is certain that even more space can be created by a rearrangement of the items. She is full of good ideas now. What if she makes all her stuff face the same way, rather than every which way? She makes a decision as to which way to direct all the items in the closet, and then she moves them all to that position. Certain strong and indispensable things can stay at the bottom, like honesty, trust, love, independence, and respect, and other items can rest on top of them. Some items don’t even need to be labeled, like multiplication tables and how to cook and the driving route to work. Closer to the top she places items that are subject to come and go, like what to have for lunch and whether to attend a party. Easier for the coming and going if they are right on top. And she won’t have to wonder whether they fit, because if they face a different direction, they will stick out from the rest. So now the closet is arranged horizontally according to the direction she has chosen and from bottom to top in a hierarchy of importance. Everything fits together beautifully and nothing is hidden. Everything is touching. There is so much room now in the closet, that she could save her own life and that of several friends, if necessary. But what is this . . . ?
At the back of the closet, all the way at the back, in an area she has never seen before, Ellen finds an opening, big enough to walk through. Light pours in from this opening, and she is drawn to it with a mix of certainty and excitement. Like just before opening a gift, when you know what’s in the gift. And what’s in it is your greatest desire.
What Ellen G.’s closet connects to, through this opening, is beyond description. It has to do with light and mirrors and shiny metaphors like that. You won’t believe me if I tell you what it is. But if this intrigues you, maybe you could go into your own closet to see what’s there.