Triage – Spaghetti sauce on the ceiling – and a bit of a rant

I have spaghetti sauce on my ceiling. I have no idea how it got there, because I’ve never had a pot of sauce explode in volcanic magnificence as only an overboiled sauce pot can. I can’t reach my ceiling, and I don’t care. If I could reach my ceiling, a clean ceiling is so far down on my list of necessities that about once-every-other-year, when I change a light bulb (I can barely reach the light bulbs, HURRAH for extended-life products!!!!), I see the splotch and think “Oh, yea, that.”

Choosing to perform triage, “the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success” (Merriam-Webster dictionary), is an exceptionally rational act. I am at a loss to understand how our society has become so relentlessly cruel that made-for-TV images of spotless kitchens really are what we strive for, and real life – splashing flour everywhere while baking holiday cookies, refusing to make the bed because you may just tumble into it to read a story to the grandkids  – is depicted as “unclean” or “unfulfilling” or whatever subliminal falsehood seems to work for selling more bleach and laundry detergent.

ADD-abled, but undiagnosed for years. Laid-off. Brain-injured in a car accident. Treated for cancer. Type 1 Diabetic. Litigated a hostile divorce. Survived multiple deaths in the family. These are just a few of the experiences my clients have accumulated in their lives. And nonetheless, they are sometimes ashamed of being disorganized.

If it becomes my turn, I know I will NEVER be on top of filing credit card statements after a chemo session, won’t give a D*** about a well-made bed for years after losing my child.

If I do no other service for my clients than this – teaching them that we are all human, and no one will ever get all the filing done perfectly, or even completely done, and that I have a spot of spaghetti sauce on my kitchen ceiling, I will have done my job, and done it well.