Lived-in Lives are Always Messy.

My life is a mess, and that's okay. Living, even living well, is, by its nature, messy. And the pursuit of an ideal, clean, perfectly organized life is the delusion of an anxious rebel.

Most good things, whether a matter of pleasure or productivity, result in varying levels of mess. The pleasure of a slice of watermelon on a hot summer day carries with it sticky hands. The skilled craftsman can't escape the inevitable wood chips and shavings of a productive workshop. Even the joy of marital intimacy can be a messy affair. And every hard day's labor, whether in an office or on a factory floor, necessitates an evening shower.

The Fall has definitely complicated matters, increasing difficulty, which no doubt has intensified the messiness of life. But I have a hard time believing that a pre-Fall world would have been a world without wood chips and sticky stuff. I think all of that is simply part of the nature of creation. God made some things messy.

It is a working assumption of mine that pre-Fall oxen still had to relieve themselves. Perhaps, prior to the forbidden fruit, oxen dung smelled like petunias. But I somehow strongly doubt it. Which is why acting as if mess isn't part of reality is the delusion of a rebel.

Like Proverbs says, if you're going to have oxen to get things done, you're going to have a mess to deal with.
Some will say, "Yeah, but that's no excuse for having a messy house or a messy life or living in disorder." I beg to differ. I wouldn't call it an excuse, but I would say it is an explanation. This stuff is inevitable. And just as some people use its inevitability as cover for their laziness, other people use their anxious desire for respectable cleanliness as a cover for their delusions.

Pursuing things that don't exist is always costly. I think embracing the mess of life as simply a fact of life is key to being able to enjoy the world God made for us.

This is related, maybe only tangentially so, but I hate how homes are designed to look like the inside of a Pottery Barn or staged for Instagram. They lack color. There's very little uniqueness. It's different from the very lived-in sort of homes that I grew up in. Admittedly, they had more knickknacks than I prefer, but they were warm. They were homey. They were a little messy. They looked lived in.

Lived-in lives are always messy.

That's it. That's the point. There are some other thoughts I have on this that I'll refine at some point, but I thought this was worth sharing.