Welcome to another month of taking metta off the meditation cushion and out into everyday life.
November had me creating and holding space of all kinds for others in “Metta’s Speakeasy,” while December found me bagging up and taking out the trash of 2025 on every level.
Long-time readers may remember one of the first articles I wrote for BDG titled “Home Truths: Belonging No Place, Belonging Every Place” that explored living the reality of this Maya Angelou quote.
It described how visiting my oldest friend for a week turned into a nine-month stay due to her struggle with depression. Holding space, tackling practical tasks, and watching all 12 seasons of the television series Murder, She Wrote helped more during that phase than any analysis or advice.
When the walking holiday company that I am still working for closed operations for a week before Christmas, I checked in with that same friend to see whether she would welcome a quick visit after breaking her foot. Her mother died last summer and I knew she was feeling overwhelmed by both the grief and the ongoing administrative tasks. I also still had a few things stored in her garage that were weighing on my conscience.
I arrived with an empty suitcase and without preconceptions, grateful for a breather from my own recent work tensions and surviving a year of bullying of all kinds. I still recognized her when I saw her, but also saw a lot more too.
Over dinner that night, we caught up with each other and she confided that she had recently moved on from Murder, She Wrote‘s Jessica Fletcher and cozy crime. Her latest guilty pleasure was binge-watching decluttering programs. She also admitted that her garage was currently too full to even catch a glimpse of my things.
We both slowly looked around and laughed while the penny dropped at the all-too-obvious reason the Dharma had orchestrated this standstill and reunion, and the next day we rolled up our shirtsleeves to get to work.
Triaging objects into “keep,” “toss,” or “donate” bags sparked memories of our shared household 12 years earlier. My friend is still the sentimental maximalist to my unsentimental minimalist, and we shared stories and coffee and tears as the day progressed.
The death of her mother was tough, as was organizing the funeral later with her siblings. Luckily, they all pulled together their different skill sets and created a magical celebration of their mother’s life.
As I listened, I was secretly amazed at how decisive she was being for someone who described herself as currently frozen. I would hold up every new find, wait to hear its fate, and then carry it to one of the three bags. Like the little and big hand on a clock face, we worked our way around her living space finding one perch for her to sit on at a time. Paradoxically, being so immobilized by a broken foot brought home to her the need for more space and easier access much more effectively than any decluttering TV show ever could.
At one point, she opened up about an online worry course her doctor had recommended to help with her grief. She became really annoyed, describing just how useless she found it as the instructor and her fellow students described imagined concerns and phobias as worries when the things she was worrying about were very real legal and logistical problems. At the next online meeting, she surprised herself by “tossing” the course altogether, so we brainstormed what might help her more.
At another point, she described the bullying she had quietly endured from a former boss and her survivor’s guilt and loneliness at being the only member of her former team who still had a job after COVID lockdown. She went on to describe how a former coworker had created the most unlikely and delightful side hustle, going from conserving historic paintings to painting cardboard coffins. She pulled up examples on her phone—the coffins were works of art: bright and vibrant mosaics of photos and illustrations and memories of a person’s life, sometimes even painted by the deceased’s families themselves.
When our first go-through of sorting her stuff was complete, “homes” for everything to “keep” sprung to life: a work-from-home office, a gift-and-wrapping wardrobe, a family-visit cabinet full of games and toys, a guest-linens chest, and a chest of drawers for crafting projects.
Like Andy in the movie The Shawshank Redemption (1994) slowly disposing of tunnel gravel from the pockets of his trousers in the prison yard, I made little-but-often visits to the communal bins to discreetly dispose of things to be “tossed.”
The “donate” category was the most satisfying to box up, and carry a carload of goods to a local children’s hospice.
Whenever one of us grew tired, we’d stop for a drink or a snack or a nap, and then resume. Each early morning and late evening of my stay, I would generate metta from the sofa-bed, right in the eye of the decluttering storm.
Next, we moved to the bathroom, which had me in stitches with its—quite literally—hundreds of toilet rolls. When I asked how and why there were so many, she sheepishly admitted to not figuring out how to cancel the delivery service on time over the summer. We made some new sapce to hide them away, then I brought tray after tray of toiletries to the kitchen table for her to triage.
My friend is generally very low maintenance and doesn’t like to draw attention to herself, so it surprised me just how many trays I was carrying. Just how much makeup and lotions and potions could one person actually use? Interestingly, each item sparked a story. Some were gifts, some were guest leftovers, and some were as-yet-unrealized resolutions. My friend held up unopened bottle after bottle of serums with increasingly impossible chemical names, shaking her head at just how bored she’d become stuck at home during the 2020 lockdown.
She looked down at the growing “donate” pile and wondered who would want any of it. I grinned, reminding her that I currently lived with 12 co-workers all in need of pampering, and that there were enough products to open a spa. We also found lots of forgotten medications, some of which had been more effective than others. It silently broke my heart to hear the side effects that each had caused my friend, and gladdened my heart to discover the current medication caused the fewest.
Paring down five shelves of a private pharmacy to one also made fresh space for guest towels. I rolled and folded them as I would at work, and she delighted how the end result now looked like a spa shelf.
As we stopped to admire three days’ progress, I noticed that my socks were wet. I looked down at the floor: the bathroom radiator had sprung a leak! I scrambled around for anything and everything that might stem the flow, and noticed that someone had previously adjusted one of the radiator’s legs with pennies, the way that pubs often steady wonky tables with beer mats. We tried the same with another leg, and the shift was enough to slow the leak to a trickle until a plumber could visit.
We agreed that I would return a month later to tackle her bedroom and the dreaded garage, and my friend gave me a jokey parting gift: a sturdy tote bag with “do no harm” on one side and “take no shit” on the other. We both laughed at just how fitting the slogan was, given that my suitcase was still empty after wading ankle-deep through my friend’s “shit” for her.
And so, dear readers, whatever grief may have frozen you to a standstill in 2025, let metta help you decide what to “keep,” “toss,” or “give away” before striding forth into 2026.
Or, to metta-morphose Bastille’s song “Good Grief” about living the paradox of mourning and celebration, eulogy and euphoria, melancholy and merry:
If you want to be a party animal,
You have to learn to live in the jungle
Now stop worrying and go get dressedYou might have to excuse me
I’ve lost control of all my senses
And you might have to excuse me
I’ve lost control of all my wordsSo get drunk, call me a fool
Put me in my place, put me in my place
Metta pick me up, up off the floor
Metta put me in my place, put me in my placeEvery minute and every hour
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Every stumble and each misfire
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you moreWatching through my fingers
Watching through my fingers
Cause every minute and every hour
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more
Related features from BDG
Get Your Death Ducks in a Row
Death and Decay, Birth and Rebirth: Cycles of Life in Nature and Ourselves
Cleaning the Fridge: Getting Off Autopilot
The Promise of Fabulousness
A Buddhist View on Capitalism and Consumerism
