Some years ago, when I was the "Community Coordinator" in Denver, Colorado, I worked closely with a very Zen-minded man named Jon Lieben. Jon was in charge of all maintenance and repairs to the Community Center and had an office next to mine.

One day, as I was walking by Jon's office, I saw that he, with his left arm, was sweeping all of the papers and files on his desk into a big empty box on the floor.

My first impression was quite judgmental -- that what Jon was doing was NOT a very skillful way to organize all of the many papers, projects, and details he was responsible for -- anyone of which, if left undone, would end up affecting hundreds of people and possible causing big problems, some of which that I would have to deal with later.

"Jon", I called out," What are you DOING, man? That's a lot of important papers you're just chucking into the trash. Don't you think you should, at least, LOOK at that stuff before throwing it away?"

Jon looked at me with an enigmatic smile. And paused.

"The way I figure it, Mitch, is that if any of these are REALLY important, somebody's gonna call me."

While I was absolutely bamboozled by Jon's approach at the time, the older I've gotten, the more I've come to realize how brilliant it was.

I've got files up the wazoo in my office, stacks of multi-colored folders in more than a few places, each file with a carefully written label telling me what's in it -- or, in some case, big bold words I've written on the folder, itself, words like "DEAL WITH THIS NOW!" or "IMPORTANT FINANCIAL STUFF."

Basically, this stuff just sits there like high school geometry homework waiting to be filed, which I rarely do. When I finally get guilty enough or anxious enough to actually DO something, I look through these stacks and discover that 95% of them are completely useless -- some kind of "paper trail" I never need to follow, the flora and fauna of somebody else's concept of what's important in my life.

If Jon was standing in my office, he would have, a long time ago, simply swept them into a big empty box on the floor, freeing me up from having to look at this stuff -- a visual phenomenon that has always left me feeling there was something UNDONE in my life and that something that REALLY NEEDED MY ATTENTION, when in fact, it didn't.

Let's hear it for Jon Lieben, ladies and gentlemen, and the realization that life is much simpler than how we perceive it most of the time.

(Jon, if you are reading this. THANK YOU!)

MitchDitkoff.com

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