My mother has a dining table which sits right in the middle of her dining room. It was once buried beneath piles of papers—magazines, articles, copies of schedules for vacations she took back in the 1990s, and baby pictures of grand children who are now paying off their college loans.
My brother Ross and I recently flew to New York to visit my mother. "Mom, why don't we go through all that stuff?" Ross said. "No. Don't touch it!" my mother said. The next afternoon, when she couldn't find a bill she needed, Ross suggested it might be put somewhere in the dining room and that we find it together. " Besides, " he said, " all those papers are clearly stressing you out. "However, my mother just said, "Are you boys hungry? "And then she seemed to have lost herself in deep thought.
On our last night there, my mother walked up to us with a small pile of unopened mails, which she had collected at the western edge of the dining table, and said, " Help me go through these. Sure, "I said. When we had succeeded in separating wheat from chaff (谷壳) , I asked, " Would you want to deal with another little pile of papers? "
My mother led the way, walking into the dining room the way an animal manager might be while entering a cage with tigers in it. Ross and 1 came in behind her and suddenly he reached for a pile of the papers on one side of the table. "No! "my mother said sharply. "Let's start at the other end. That's where the older stuff is. " Finally, we threw 95 percent of the stuff into paper shopping bags. Then I asked what she wanted us to do with them, and she surprised us all by saying, "Put them in the incinerator (垃圾焚化炉）. "
When I returned home, inspired by the visit to my mother, I sorted out my own accumulated （积累的） piles of papers, sold or gave away half of my possessions, and moved into a smaller house. It seems that my life has been cheaper and easier since then. And it proves that a small change does make a big difference.
