The most important task you will ever do in your life: Washing your Dishes.
“To look at the ordinary so intensely that the ordinary becomes the extraordinary” — Manoj Pun.
Have you ever considered how a mundane task like washing your dishes can become a profound experience if you let it be?
Here’s a clip of ourselves when we do our dishes. We get to the kitchen sink and see all the mess. The leftover salads, potatoes, chunks of beans and who know what. You have your pans, stockpots, cups, fork, knives, cutting board, and some flying saucers. Basically it’s a mess. Did we clean our tables before we came into the sink? I think we probably should do that first.
Alright, now we have our soap, scrubber, sponge, and gloves, let us begin. Fist, We get our sink organized. We divide the dishes into two parts, big and heavy on our left, the small ones on our right. While we are sorting our dishes, we clean the leftovers that we can with our hands. The leftovers go into the trashcan.
Now we have an empty sink, we fill them up with our big ones first. We start with our heavy utensils with soap and scrub. Then stack them on the bottom of the sink. Once we are done with our left, we go to our right. Soap and scrub then stack them on the top. Once you have stacked them all, it’s water time. Simmer it with light force and rinse each with water until it’s not slippery.
The good thing about stacking is, big utensil on the bottom doesn’t need much clean water. Save water, people.
Now, stack your dishes on a rack to dry for an hour and then wipe them with a clean towel before you put them on their shelves.
And we are done.
Of course, you will have hard utensils to clean but that’s another story. And this is not the only way to clean your dishes, is it? You can fill the sink with water, you can even clean it randomly, or use a dishwasher, end of the story.
The intention of this article is not to teach you how to be an expert in washing your dishes.
The intention is to show you how much self-awareness is involved in a simple act of washing dishes.
We are looking at our dishes first, then sorting them, along with it we take out the unnecessary, srub the dishes, place them together, rinse them with water and put them in order.
Can we use a similar model in your life?
We look at our situation, prioritize them, exclude the unnecessary, work on ourselves, put ourselves in a process, let ourselves settle and put different aspects of our lives in their order.
Now I don’t want to sound like an idealist here. After many conversations and observations with family, friends, and acquaintances.
I conclude, “ we don’t really know what we are doing and we act as if we know what we are doing.”
Let me be honest, even I don’t know why I am writing this article. I don’t even know if someone will ever read it. But I do know this, in the process of creating this I had to act. I had to tap into a part of me that wants to express itself. I had to think and thinking is a hefty process. A process to become aware of myself and examine my life.
As Socrates says, “ὁ … ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ”
Translation: “An unexamined life is not worth living”.
I have a 55yrs old friend who thinks about gratitude toward his late mother in his dish time. This insight provides us with the possibility to choose how we want to spend our time. Because our mind is constantly chattering 24/7, why not at least choose our subject to chatter about.
Thank you for being with me so far.
