“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‘Always do what you are afraid to do.’” Emerson

We spent a chunk of Sunday pulling up the carpet at the top of our stairs. Not exactly noteworthy, but something I have been refusing to do for the last year. Why the refusal? Not because I enjoyed the aesthetic of a frayed and dusty blue kitty scratching pad squatting in the prime real estate between the bedroom and the bathroom, that’s for sure. Every time I walked over it I would say to myself (okay, mostly out loud): ‘God damn. I hate this bloody carpet. Oh fantastic, the cats have pulled that corner completely loose now.’

I am not exactly sure what pushed me to yank it up today. But I did enjoy pulling that stinky thing up and chucking it out the back door. And alas there was hardwood underneath. Not lovely hardwood; worn, fragmented, uneven hardwood. But hardwood that I can live with for now. Hardwood does not trap the dust mites and make me curse on the trip from the bedroom to the bathroom simply by being there. Hardwood cannot be rip-rip-ripped at by cat claws, in the middle of the night, just outside the bloody bedroom door.

I spent a lot of time imagining the horrors that were hidden underneath that patch of carpet. Why was it there? What was it covering up? Must be some really nasty bits under there. Errrr, let’s just leave it for now. Scary carpet.

What if we stopped being scared of what might, could, possibly go wrong? What if we yank up all the carpets and see what wonders are hidden underneath?