I must be the smartest man in the world. At least on Cobb Road.
There is a philosophy afoot that messiness is a certain sign of brilliance. Let’s go to Albert Einstein, the smartest of us all: “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
Alby was one of us.
Cobb Manor is the messiest house I have ever seen, except for a few rifled cabins I have visited. It is the eighth wonder of the world that Blue Eyes, she of the operating room hygiene, ever sets foot in the place. I think she secretly takes solace in the comparison with her place.
There is a reason we have lived apart for 33 years. Here the pans get piled in the sink, then washed when no clean ones exist. The floor gets washed at least once a season. The rugs? When you can hear yourself walk across them, they get vacuumed. The beds? Don’t ask about the beds. Big John Hammer left The Cobb last August after his cooking extravaganza. The bed was stripped and the sheets washed immediately. The sheets still are sitting on top of the bed, waiting for Hammer’s possible return. No sense making the bed if he never comes back.
I consider my lifestyle “relaxed.” Jefferson Phil has suggested turning The Cobb into an Airbnb, to make some money. Forget it. First, I would have to clean the bathrooms. Then I would have to clean the bedrooms, then the kitchen. I suppose the customers will want some breakfast on the deck. More dishes. Thank God for dishwashers. Without mine, the dishes would fight for space in the already overcrowded sink.
Only when strangers, or the Hillgroves visit, do I see Cobb Manor through their eyes.
What a freakin’ mess.
I was never bothered by all of this, strangely. Now, I am proud of it, thanks to Dan Scotti’s scribbling on EliteDaily.com and my new friend and messy scientist Kathleen Vohs, out there in the University of Minnesota.
Let’s start with Scotti who said: “There has always been this sort of ‘urban legend’ that has floated around modern society deeming people with messy desks as having a high affinity for creative reasoning.” He identified my new pal Vohs for saving freelance slobs across the country.
New studies, conducted by “psychological scientist” Vohs and her fellow researchers at the University of Minnesota have been published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
“Prior work has found that a clean setting leads people to do good things: Not engage in crime, not litter, and show more generosity,” Vohs explained. “We found, however, that you can get really valuable outcomes from being in a messy setting.”
See?
Scientists from the University of Minnesota found that being surrounded by clutter can promote creative thinking and stimulate new ideas. Messy people also are more likely to break with convention and try new things but aren’t as generous as people in tidy environments.
Scotti checked out Einstein’s desk and said it “looked like a spiteful ex-girlfriend had a mission to destroy his workspace, and executed it rather successfully. Yet, there’s no denying Einstein’s creativity.”
I suspect Scotti is one of us. He reported that Mark Twain, too, had a cluttered desk. Perhaps even more cluttered than that of Einstein. “Mark Twain was one of the most imaginative minds of his generation,” Scotti testified.
“If the likes of Einstein and Mark Twain don’t catch the attention of Generation-Y, I give you Steve Jobs. No wonder he invented iBooks, it’s clear he had trouble maintaining his real life ones. His desk, and office alike, were [expletive] disasters. I suppose this just added to his brilliance,” he added.
Nobody, not even Scotti and Vohs, are saying that being a slob will make you any smarter. But they have given us answers to those who constantly ask: “When are you going to clean this place up?”
And I thank them from the bottom of my messy heart.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.