Tending to Entropy

When I was young, we had a dog. One year we got behind on poop scooping. That fall the leaves dropped, and my job was to rake both the leaves and the poop at once. I still remember the sheer aversion of it. The smell, the mess, the feeling of not wanting to be there.

The funny thing about aversion is that it isn’t really about the task itself. It’s an energy that shows up in the body. A contraction. A pushing away.

The other day in meditation, I felt a constriction in my chest. Tight and wound, it wouldn’t open. I tried breathing into it, releasing it. Nothing worked. Only when I accepted it did a memory surface, that old poop-scooping aversion. And I realized, this same energy shows up for me today in much smaller ways: little projects around the house, chores I’d rather skip, responsibilities I’d rather avoid.

But here’s the shift:
The task isn’t to flip dislike into like. That’s a trap.
The task is to meet aversion with appreciation for what it represents.

Every nail hole filled, every leaf raked, every bit of poop scooped is part of the great dance of entropy. Disorder builds, and life calls us to tend it. To bring order where disorder arises. Not because it’s glamorous, not because it’s important in some cosmic sense, but simply because it’s the living pulse of being human in this world.

When the “importance metrics” of the mind drop away, when expectation and time fall off, all that’s left is the task itself. And in that, there is only one way to do it: with presence. Perfectly, not because of outcome, but because you are fully there.

This week, maybe notice:
Where does aversion rise up for you?
What if the very moment you feel it, that contraction in the body, could be a doorway? An invitation to tend. To participate in the quiet rhythm of life’s unfolding.

In the end, whether scooping poop or chopping wood, patching holes or carrying water, it’s all the same. Just tending to entropy, one small gesture at a time.