Rolling Up The Red Carpet

By Christine Jayakaran

September 22^nd, 2021

So a year back I got a good deal on a thread carpet and a matching pouffe. Imagine my delight at being able to spread this carpet below our piano and set the pouffe beside it to give it a classy yet very rehearsed look. My husband’s pet peeve is seeing me arrange, rearrange and re-rearrange our home. I often need his services to move big furniture pieces around but most often I’m content to just make minor changes that bring me major satisfaction. Yes. I’m weird. I think that was established a long time back.

Anyway, looks like someone else had a pet peeve concerning my carpet. It was our pet, Mocha. She is a sweet and disciplined dog all of the time, except when she isn’t. She made it her personal mission to sniff out my red carpet thoroughly and then at night, when we were in another room, mark her territory on it. I mean come on! She knows where she’s supposed to go. She knew the rules and there was discipline waiting for her when she messed up. This business though, was so underhanded because she would do this when none of us were in the vicinity and we wouldn’t discover it until the next morning when there was an iffy smell emanating from the living room. Or worse still, one of us would unknowingly walk bare feet on a damp portion of the carpet and accuse each other of spilling something on it.

This went on for a while. It came to a point where I would actually go downstairs dreading what state my carpet would be in. To make things worse, it was a multicoloured threaded carpet so washing it was hard. It had natural dyes so when I washed the “territory marked” area, the colour ran a bit. The next time it happened, I washed the new damp region. The colour stayed this time but the carpet looked duller to my eyes. (I could have been imagining it!) I was at the end of my “threaded” rope so to speak when the dog once more decided that this rug would be her mobile loo. I then took the carpet out, washed it completely and allowed it to dry for two days (it was that heavy, what with all the natural dyes and stuff).

Once it was bone dry, I rolled it up and packed it away in our loft. You may wonder why I just gave up without a fight! I mean, who gives into a fluffy goofball like this! You’re probably saying “Come on! Show her who’s boss!" I agree. I could have.

But you see, it wasn’t defeat that made me do that. It was just a matter of my priorities. This rug and its potential condition every morning was stealing my joy and the precious moments of my mornings when I had other matters to attend to ( such as sitting in silence before the kids woke up). It also made me a shrew with my dog, who was my constant companion and personal cheerleader (it’s true - she knows not to bite the hand that feeds her).

Yes, the carpet looked nice.

Yes, my dog needed discipline.

Yes, this is probably not a topic worthy of a blog.

The reason I even write this though is that so many of us are wasting time on things that don’t matter.

We are in a mad pursuit of so many things and often overlook the people, the milestones and the moments that really count.

Each of us have our own red carpets - those things that take up a huge portion of our time and energy. Our red carpets could be our gadgets, our endless career goals, our social media personas and our ambitions. The red carpet is sometimes our need for perfection with our bodies, homes and loved ones. Red carpets can also be things that are essential to our lives but have now gotten undue attention.

Where will it all end?

When the children become non-communicative, the spouse gets progressively distant, a friend stops trying to reach out, when we lose a loved one - it may be too late to rectify the damage that the “red carpet” caused in our lives.