The Wisdom of the Sock Drawer

What’s all this talk about surrendering anyway?

In theory, it’s easy. I do it 100 times every day. Something comes up that seems beyond my capacity to manage, and I turn it over to a higher power. More and more, I’m letting go of all the decisions and trusting the universe has my back.

Estimated quarterly taxes? I surrender the calculations and the payment to the divine. I’m willing to do whatever I’m guided to do.

Rent increase and overly complicated new lease with multiple addendums? Ugh! I just can’t deal with this. Show me what to do.

Complex issues regarding aging parents? I’m willing to let it all go.

Running a small business that is contrary to the collective narrative of healthcare? All of it surrendered.

When questions and worries come up, I pray for guidance and then pay attention to any messages that come through. They often arrive in dreams, synchronicities or oracle card readings. Some of the bigger issues require a steady stream of surrendering as my mind is heavily conditioned to think it’s in control.

It occurred to me last week what I’m really surrendering is the illusion of control. That I’m finally beginning to acknowledge that I’m not in charge of much of what happens in my life. Sure, I get to decide what fruit to put in my smoothie and what color shirt to wear.

But there’s so much more that I have absolutely no influence over.

I owe this latest level of clarity to spring cleaning and my sock drawer.

Yep. You read that right! The wisdom of the sock drawer.

Every year I do a deep cleanse around the spring equinox. This year, I adopted a theme: maximum impact with minimum effort. (I suspect you’ll be hearing more about this over time as it really resonates.)

When it came time to put away my laundry, I realized that matching and folding my socks had almost no impact. The majority of my socks are identical purple crew socks. Matching and folding them doesn’t take much effort, but there’s absolutely no benefit. It doesn’t take up less space or help me get dressed more easily.

I remembered a family friend telling me once that I was the only 3-year-old who organized her sock drawer, and boom! I clearly saw how as I child, I adopted this strategy as a coping mechanism. There was much in my life that I had no control over and claiming my sock drawer as my sovereign domain was empowering and elicited a sense of safety.

Nearly 50 years later and that behavior hasn’t changed, despite an overwhelming absence of evidence that there has been any impact. Curious, isn’t it, that over five decades, never once did I question this behavior.

So, for the first time ever, I dropped all those purple socks into a pile in the drawer. Then I considered the other contents- the novelty and wool socks. I decided to keep on matching and folding them as it does make it easier to find what I’m looking for.

Rather than just choosing a new rule- sock chaos- I opted for a hybrid version. We shall see how this progresses.

So now, each time I get dressed in the morning, I open the drawer to find a colorful and chuckle-inducing reminder. I don’t have to do things the way I’ve always done things just because it’s familiar.

So, while the sock drawer itself is hardly life-changing, the awareness of habitual patterns and attempts to use control to strengthen the illusion is HUGE. I’m watching the ripples spread out into several areas of my life.

How often do we overlook important messages that come in mundane packages? Not only do we miss out on the lesson when we expect guidance to come in extraordinary wrapping, but we lose a chance to build trust that Spirit is truly guiding us.

I’m eager to see where this goes! And I’d love to hear from you- how to do you intercept messages in your daily life? How do you keep that spark of AHA! alive moving forward?

I’m also amused at how this points to another example of the Intersections that I wrote about a few weeks back. How my spring-cleaning annual ritual met the theme of minimum effort/ maximum impact and blended with the practice of surrender organically, but it was something as simple as socks that captured my attention!

Gotta love how it’s all interwoven.