Lessons from sweeping

One memory I’ve always held from my very first trip to India in 2012 has been of the women who sweep. If you’ve been to India, you have probably seen them. I noticed them again when I returned this past December. They are women of all ages, carrying long brooms made of what looks like natural materials, perhaps dried leaves or thin twigs. They sweep leaves, rocks and dirt from the streets, grassy yards and even dirt driveways. I was always confused as to why they were sweeping areas outside that will never become clean. Sweeping a dirt driveway seems about as pointless as trying to roll a ball uphill. But this morning, only four months after getting curious about it, I laughed with a realization.

These women are showing us what it looks like to live. To day after day return to the same space to sweep and tidy, knowing that the task will never be finished. Knowing that the reward is not found in the completion of the work, rather it is found in the action. To have the endurance to return every morning to the same space and clean, only to find it a mess the following day, seems exhausting to say the least. But it is only exhausting if the goal is cleanliness. What if we shift towards the action and not the outcome?

I have been staying in a small studio apartment with my dog Trek for the past month. It is a magical little place that has taught me so much. But it also has wood floors and beautiful light that streams in through the windows. If you have a dog that sheds, you know what that means, fur visible everywhere. My first week here, I started to sweep Trek’s fur from the floors every morning as part of my routine. It was satisfying to have a clean floor immediately after the task. But low and behold, within minutes, it appeared as if Trek turned into a porcupine and shot all of his fur everywhere just to spite me.

This frustrated me to no end at first. But every morning, without fail, I swept. As the days passed, I began to enjoy this short part of my morning routine for reasons I could not quite explain. It was still a mess minutes after I finished. I could have swept every hour and continued to find fur. Then this morning it clicked; I am feeling satisfied by the action rather than the reward.

This idea, of acting without being focused on the outcome, is something I have studied through yoga. For what feels like years, my teacher has repeated this lesson. I really thought I understood it. Let go of expectations. Act from a heart led place and trust. Do not hold on to the illusion of control. All so simple right?! Really, yes, it is simple. It makes me laugh to realize how complicated I have been making this idea in my head. How much I have been trying to focus on letting go of expectations only to catch myself over and over clutching them tightly to my chest.

Expectations are inevitable. What would be the point of doing any action if you did not have an expectation of what the fruits of that action would be? That would be utter delusion to walk around performing actions without having any thought towards an outcome. It is comical that it took me sweeping my space every day for a month and a recollection of the women of India to begin to embody a new way of understanding.

The purpose is not to release ourselves from the expectations, it is to find purpose in the action. This makes so much sense in my head right now but I am not sure I am conveying my thoughts well. Imagine how simple life could be if we followed the wise words Krisna speaks to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, a spiritual text of yoga; One who performs his dutiful acts without depending on the rewards of actions is a renúnciate and a Yogi.

I am realizing how much our lives are unconsciously driven by expectations every day. In a sense, it took me walking away from what I’ve been referring to as the “real world” to become curious enough to witness this. To me, it can also come back to our ever present unconscious drive towards survival and the stories we have inherited from the world around us that color this drive. For example, I believed I needed to work to make money to buy food, shelter and water because without those things, I would die. If you take out the middle part, which makes logical sense, you end up with, I need to work or else I will die.

Low and behold, I haven’t worked for five months now and I haven’t quite died! My brain is grappling with how this is possible because the story that kept me alive for so long all the sudden is skewed. Having to work to live is not untrue, but it is also not absolute truth. The “real world” often holds these expectations over us without asking our permission in a sense. At the end of the day, these are simply stories passed down to us from the greater collective around us. What would shift if we began to get curious about why we are acting the way we are in life?

How different could working every day feel if rather than doing it as a means of survival, we shifted our awareness towards the act of working every day. The result is still the same, but the heaviness lifts. What if I sweep because it reminds me that I have a space to clean and tidy, rather than doing so in hopes of the space staying clean. All of a sudden, I am grateful for the act rather than frustrated by the mess that shows up a few minutes later.

Life is constantly a cycle of action and results, I don’t think any of us are getting off what feels like a hamster wheel any time soon. So why do we often insist on torturing ourselves with focusing on the results even when they are so far into the future? No, I am not saying everyone should quit their job because life still stumbles forward even without the perceived stability a job provides. What I am saying is perhaps it is time to get curious about if your actions are actually still aligning with the expectations you seek. And what may happen if we let go of the focus on the results and pay more attention to the actions of every day.

Are we so focused unknowingly on the outcome, whether that’s money, retirement or happiness that we lose sight of what is driving our actions every day? Are we constantly returning to the same spot to sweep over and over expecting to one day show up and it be finally clean? Because that simply is not how life works, there will always be a mess to tidy.

I wish I could go back to India and ask the beautiful women who sweep why they show up day after day. I wonder what beautiful wisdom they contain.