Loading tweets...
The more I estimate houses for gutter replacement, the more I liken rain to thoughts, and gutters to critical thinking skills. I can’t help it.
You know, it drove me nuts that when my husband first started his rain gutter company, all he would talk about when driving through residential areas was gutters. He would point to that house and say, “They need new gutters.” He would point to another house while driving 35 mph and notice that it didn’t have gutters at all. Or he could even notice when downspouts were missing from the gutter installation. This is selective vision at its finest.
Now I’m doing it, too. “Oh, their gutters are leaking. ” “Sheesh, none of their neighbors have 3×4 downspouts, but they do.”
In theory, you need gutters on your house to safely direct the rainwater away from your foundation. Water has a way of damaging concrete, especially standing water or constantly dripping water that forms puddles at your foundation. Without gutters, before you know it, you’ve got cracks in the walls and your front porch has sunk several inches.
Critical thinking skills are needed to help your decision making abilities. Meditation is needed to help quiet the mind and direct thoughts. If you let your mind run amok with every distracting thought, you’ll damage your values, ethics, morals, etc. (Don’t they call these traits a good foundation? See where I’m going…)
Gutters are installed on a house near the end of construction, yet they are critical to guarding the safety of the first thing constructed: the foundation and walls. Critical thinking skills are developed late in youth; I’d guess around the time a child becomes a teenager or a little before that. It is critical thinking and meditation together that actually guard your mind from falling prey to false logic. Cracks in the “foundation” of the mind appear as a mismatch between values and behavior, inappropriate acting out, inappropriate risk-taking, inability to deal with anger and fear constructively, which then could lead to depression.
Guiding our thoughts is like directing rainwater safely away from the foundation of a house. The rain falls on everything indiscriminately. We all have all sorts of thoughts. Some are happy, naughty, fearful, angry, loving, regretful. Just as you’re not afraid of the rain (uh, unless it’s acid rain but that’s another analogy altogether…), don’t be afraid of your thoughts. Develop your watcher during meditation and then continue watching your thoughts with curiosity during the day. You’d be surprised how much emotional progress you can make by simply making observations about your thought process. The rain gutters don’t judge the rain that flows through them. The purpose of a gutter is to reduce the stress to the foundation. The purpose of meditation as well as critical thinking is to reduce stressful thinking.
Gutters full of muck
Sometimes leaves and muck fill up the gutters and stop the flow of water. You clean the gutters out and then rainwater can once again be directed safely away from the house instead of spilling over the top of the gutter reservoir. Respectively, our mental health and emotional health needs attention every once in a while, too. Clean out the muck every once in a while and you’ll be happier in the long run!
7 comments
Terrill Welch says:
April 19, 2010 at 6:57 pm (UTC -7 )
Jessica this is a fine piece of writing and a great analogy. As I look a the debris in our gutters from winter storms… I can so relate to your story. Now for a little maintenance on both counts.
Jessica says:
April 19, 2010 at 7:11 pm (UTC -7 )
Thank you Terrill. Maintenance is the perfect word to relate to both ideas in this post.
Martha Marshall says:
April 20, 2010 at 1:14 pm (UTC -7 )
Jessica, great analogy! I think my critical thinking is pretty finely tuned, but I do tend to let in too many creative ideas at once! They can build up to the point that I don’t know what to tackle first and so I’m immobilized.
I agree that meditation is a sure cure for this! Thanks for the reminder.
Martha
PS – Oh, and I need gutters.
Jessica says:
April 22, 2010 at 11:10 am (UTC -7 )
Martha: I have the same issue: too many ideas at once leading to inaction on any. I saw your impressive abstract acrylics at your blog. Looks like you’re acting on plenty of your creative ideas!
Kathy says:
May 20, 2010 at 10:17 am (UTC -7 )
Our minds should have gutters! You are absolutely right. And we should check ‘em to see if they’re filled with all those leaves from last fall. Yep, I see some in my mind. Going to climb on a ladder and get them out right now! Thanks, Jessica.
Jessica says:
May 20, 2010 at 10:26 am (UTC -7 )
I see some old dirt and leaves in my own mind, too! Voice dialog to the rescue.
Gutters says:
September 13, 2011 at 7:16 am (UTC -7 )
Yah! your right Jessica, maintenance is really the perfect word to describe this post. Maintenance is very important for a gutters to last long.