Take out...

Yesterday I was annoyed by the repeated prompts from Google about running out of the free combined space of my Google accounts. So I went about on an aggressive deleting spree and found that I did not even scratch the surface. What puzzled me was the amount of mails and files that I had deleted which was a part of my life for over many years did not even make any impact to the total memory consumed.

All these days of the lockdown there is a massive cleaning exercise at homes where everything that comes from outside be it man or material are cleaned before anything else happens. Mercifully in Chennai the drought is yet to hit despite the many hand washing, baths, and objects washing being done every day everywhere. Usually after any cleaning the waste is let out carefully or casually depending on what we use or how much we care for ourselves and the other. Surgical waste should be incinerated, likewise the masks we use should be safely discarded if we want everyone to be spared infection, but if we leave them lying around then we have a problem which can have a big impact.

I realized with a little help from Google that cleaning or in my case deleting the data alone will not help because I need to deep clean, meaning I will need to delete forever or empty the various trash bins. So when I emptied the bins in every account, my overall usage dropped to less than a third of the available. I did not have to pay a price, my consumption is free again!

Though both the events are seemingly unrelated at a deeper level there is a big connect. We carry a lot of unnecessary things in us; thoughts, experiences, feelings and much more which have outlived their initial impacts but still remain in the depths of our consciousness because we still cling to them. Make no mistake every one of the above had some effect or intent or purpose back then but what should be retained now is only the learning from them.  The rest should go to the trash and the trash should be safely discarded.

Life becomes better when we clean regularly and take out the trash.