Sometimes one of the most relaxing things you can do is the dishes. OK, so I could hear the groaning and felt the eyes rolling but bear with me. Granted, washing dishes can be considered a chore and at times it certainly is, but on occasion I find it relaxing.
Tonight I saw a pile of dishes in and around the sink and decided to dig in and clean them up. All the dishes I rinsed and stacked in the dish washer, but the pots needed to be washed by hand. As I started part of me went back to my college days when I worked my way through school as a dishwasher. It’s one of the few jobs in a restaurant where everyone leaves you alone (probably because they know if you left they would get stuck doing the dishes). What I liked about it was that I knew exactly what I needed to do, I had a task laid out before me and at the end of the day I had a sense of accomplishment because I had physical proof of a job well done.
Tonight was no exception. I started in scrubbing the pots and pans and immediately got lost in my own thoughts. I had a sense of accomplishment and pride as dirty pots went into the sink and clean pots emerged. At the end of it all I actually felt relaxed.
Now I’m not going to sit here and say this was the greatest accomplishment of the day. No, that would probably be attaching a chain to my truck and yanking out some shrubbery without pulling out the water main. That was an accomplishment coupled with pure luck. And no, I won’t be traveling around to my readers houses doing their dishes and getting lost in deep thought. No, you are on your own there. I simply wanted to say that we can find a sense of ourselves in even the smallest and most mundane of tasks.
