Stop mopping the world when your mop is dirty

I have been living seperated from my parents since I was a child, and very rare I would come home to visit them, so somehow they alway treat me as I am a guest in their house instead of their own child.

They would never ask me to do anything. Even sometimes after the meal with them, I stood up and started cleaning up the table and the dishes, my father would say, “Just put them in the sink, I will wash them later.” I would said, “But dad, I can do it”. He would say, “No, you won’t. Just let them there. I know how to do it better.” Well, my dad always be such a sweet man since I was born – the sweetest. He always takes care his daughters any way he can, from toes to fingers. He didn’t want the soap and cold water make my hand crumpy and itchy.

Back to the story…

One day I came visit my parents and my dad was not home. My mom asked me – maybe it was the only time she had asked. She said, “Can you help me mopping the floor? Your dad is so lazy. I asked him to do this days ago and he still doesn’t do it.”

Well, there is something about my family may make you laugh, yes, my mom made me laugh so hard too when I heard her said that. I wanted to say, “Come on, mom. But I have never seen you mopping the floor. It’s always just daddy who does the job.” but I’m smart, I know that I’m better to shut my mouth before my mom gives me a long lecture about what she has been doing for the family and how hard her life has been continuing.

Anyway it is a different story. Back to the point: That day I said “yes” and I did mop the house. And guess what? Instead of cleaning the floor, I had made a mess, a big mess.

For some magic reason, the more I tried to clean the floor, the more dirty it becomes! Such a magic! Such a nightmare!

When I almost started crying, my dad appeared just like a Wizard who comes and helps me solve the problem.

The first thing he said, was, “Stand by! Don’t even move…!”

Well, of course he didnot say that, he said, “Oh, let me do it!”

And that was the first time I had received a lesson from my dad, a good one, a beautiful one, a super meaningful one. He taught me about how to mop the floor the right way, it is all about the mop, about keeping the mop as clean as possible, washing it as often as possible. And if you mop a floor with a dirty mop, you just make the floor more dirty because you are spreading the dirt!

Noone ever can clean anything by preading the dirt! Simple like that!

Keeping the mop clean is the whole point of mopping a floor.

Wow wow wow, such a lesson!

I can see that lesson is so important and meaningful not only in mopping-house-business, but in anything that we do or trying to do.

My dad and my mom never taught us anything by words, they taught us by their own actions. And until now I still think that is the best of the best ways to teaching a kid. Not by words, but by your actions, your samples; not your opinions but your patterns, your own life.

It is the same with a child when he was born in this world. He was such an empty beautiful piece of canvas, parents all over the world trying to teach them what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, what is should and not… By this way they have been creating such a mess on their child’s life. Parents seem never stop for a moment to see if their opinions of life, if their thoughts, their beliefs are good and right enough. Parents are the most “cocky” beings in the world when they are so sure what they teach their kids are all “the truth”.

You don’t know what the truth is, because if you do, your life is not a mess, it would be a beautiful – peaceful – blissful – life. Is it? If it is not, if your life is just a mess, unhappy life, then you maybe don’t know how to live your life the right way, then maybe you don’t know what the art of living is, you maybe don’t know what the truth is, then why so hurry and confident about what you are teaching to your kids?

When the mop is dirty, stop mopping the floor!

Can you stop spreading your dirt into this world, it would be much more helpful than trying to clean this world with your dirty mop.

Think about it.

Meditate about it.

Anytime you do something and think that you are helping people, saving the world or trying to make it better, think deeply about it.

The attention may be good, but the way you do it is more important. Bad actions could erase all the good-attention away and left only the bads.

Not many people get this: even a good-attention but if it rises from the unconsiousness, it is still bad though. Someone still has to pay for it. Someone has to pay for your unconsiouness, someone has to pay for your sin – that is the whole point of the whole story about Jesus. He has to pay for your sins, by his own death. Until now Catholic people still say sorry for his death, thank you for his death and then repeat the same sins… how nonsense!

I used to ask my mom, “I did not kill Jesus, I was not in that period of time, how can I? So why I have to take the responsibility as I did kill him by saying sorry, pounding my chest all the time every week my whole life? Can I just take responsibility for my own sins in this life, and be alone myself to live this life without thinking that I killed someone or someone has died on the cross because of me?”

Of course my mom, as a well educated Catholic, would never let me take responsibility for my own sin. She keeps saying, if I stop going to church then them, themself, have to go to hell because they are my parents and I committed the worst sin: leaving the church, turn my back to God!

I don’t turn my back, I don’t leave Jesus, I just stop going to the church weekly as a routine. It is so different meaning but to my mom, stop going to the church simply mean I have commited the worst sin ever and as my parents, they have to pay for it in hell.

Jesus (would) Cry – Not Christ but Cry! Jesus’ sacritify makes me wanna cry all the time not because the way he lived and died for human’s sin (as they said) but because all the beliefs the church has been creating after his death becomes such a burden to who still living. Since the day I was born in a Catholic family, I already have a ancestral sin, as a baby, I already have a sacred-debt to pay forever – such a sad story! And even worse, no matter how hard I tried to pay for my sacred-debt of some guys name Adam-Eva “against God”, my fresh new babies – if I have any – still inherit that very debt all over again the day they were born, and same with their children and so on and on. A-sacred-impossible-paid-debt – forever… speechless…

I wonder why my parents still wonder why I don’t want to have any baby. Maybe I should tell them.

Oh well, again, it’s another story but you can see what I mean: when you – as parents – if you know so well what the truth is, what the right and wrong, what should or should not do, then congratulations, please be happy and satisfied with it and give the kids a chance to learn the truth for themselve and by themselve. Why you have to be so hurry to paint yourself, your own ideas, your own thoughts and beliefs into the poor kid’s canvas?

But if you know that you don’t know what the truth is, then maybe you should give the kids more freedom and power to discover the world by themselve. You have nothing to lose when you give the kid the right to paint his own painting. Think about it.

The same when people to do “good things” to save the world, very rare that they know what they’re doing. Very rare.

I tried to save “the world” before, I had failed, because at that moment I didn’t know what right and wrong is, I didn’t have the consiousness and the awareness in things I was doing – even they were all sounds like good things: writing books, giving advices, this and that.

I had failed because at that time I hadn’t had my own light yet but I still tried to light up the world. Nonsense me! Stupid me!

Don’t try to light up the world when your candle has no light yet. It’s meaningless.

Light up yourself first, when you have the light, then even you do nothing, the light will still spread itself. No way to stop it!

Don’t try to clean the floor when your mop is dirty. It’s not only not-helpful, it’s stupid!

Washing yourself first, cleaning yourself first, be silent, be observe, be aware – it is the way!

Phi in Sweet Phi.losophy