Where Could You Use Some Sparkle?

I just polished a family heirloom.

It’s a round crystal cut jar with a sterling silver lid—to hold candy, perhaps? 

I have had it since my mother passed away 17 years ago. She had it since her mother passed away before that. And before that, her mother. There is no one around anymore who can tell me where it came from, and what it was used for. 

I like to imagine it once held soft red and white peppermint candy from an old-fashioned general store.

Originally, I was going to pack the jar away in the basement. The lid and trim have tarnished with age. But then I decided it would be fun to clean it up and display it in the dining room instead.

I found the Nevr-Dull wadding polish, which my mother gave me. 

She was so amazed by Nevr-Dull because it was so easy to use. When I was a kid, I would help her clean the family silver once in a while. Before the Christmas holidays, she would pull out special pitchers and serving utensils, and they periodically needed some sparkle. But we had to use liquid silver polish and rags, until she found Nver-Dull.

Nver-Dull has wadding cotton with tiny, built-in abrasives that clean metals without scratching.

As I was recently polishing the family jar, I imagined who it had belonged to. It could have been my great-grandmother, Jessie. I imagined my great-grandfather Uppie wrapping it up as a birthday or Christmas gift for her, and the oohs and aahs of delight as she opened it in front of him, my Aunt May, my mom, and the rest of the family. 

Now, over a century later, there I was, holding that same jar. I could almost feel their hands on it—all of those people who lifted that lid over the last 100 years. And as I polished it, I was thinking about how Nevr-Dull works: They say it cleans silver with “fine abrasive particles of aluminum oxide and calcium carbonate dispersed in mineral spirits.”

I loved that idea: Mineral spirits.

If you had some mineral spirits that could work on you, what might you do with them?

Where are you tarnished a bit?

Perhaps it’s in how you talk to yourself.

Or maybe how you talk to others!

Perhaps it’s an old story you have carried for a few decades that is weighing you down.

Or perhaps it’s your level of patience that has thinned over time.

For me, it’s regrets that I spent too much time helicoptering as a parent. That extra weight I am carrying around. And perhaps the tale I tell myself that I am not going to accomplish everything I want to in this world before my time is done.

Maybe there’s something that could use a little polishing in your life. Something you are ready to let go of or shine up. Some old shame that does not help you to hold on to anymore. 

But only you know what that is, and where to find it.

And how to sparkle it up.

Jiddu Krishnamurti once wrote, “In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”

Only you have the access to your own version of Nevr-Dull. 

Only you know where you are a bit tarnished and what needs to be shined up.

You have access to amazing, restorative mineral spirits—if you want them.

We all do!

Time for a little New Year’s cleaning together?

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