A few days ago, I had a moment of revelation—all while washing a few dishes.
Oh no, don’t worry, this post is not about how often I do my dishes, nope. Let’s just say they get cleared from the sink as soon as possible.
This post is about something deeper — it’s about cleaning your lives without necessarily taking a dip in the holy river of Ganges (although if you did the latter, kudos to you).
The funny thing about Life is that it teaches you lessons in the most unexpected places, at the most unexpected times.
Settling with the dust
If you are alive, you’d know that gathering dust, having dirty dishes, stacking up laundry, and generating garbage are inevitable parts of life. Cleaning, therefore, is by definition inevitable.
Now, I’m no cleaning freak like Monica from Friends, but I do enjoy putting on some music over the weekend and getting rid of the dirt lying around the house.
After all, I find that the act of “cleaning” is probably more therapeutic than any therapy could ever be.
However, I’ll be honest—often times I do not pick up the vacuum cleaner until the dust has started to form a layer too thick to be ignored with the naked eye.
The result? Well, aesthetically the house doesn’t feel good. Sunshine particularly highlights the dust particles on the coffee table. I feel icky. Dust allergy sometimes gets out-of-control.
Normally, I’d attribute this behaviour to procrastination—my favorite bitch. But this time something unusual happened. This time, I realized that procrastination wasn’t the only bitch here, there was another one.
A non-spontaneous reaction
The cyclical motion of my hands came to a halt, as I gazed continuously at the ceramic dinner plate. Cold water from the faucet kept flowing in the background.
As my eyes remained fixated at that gunk-covered scrubber, a thought crossed my mind, “Is this sponge dirty enough to be thrown out?”
The question was simple. So simple that I should’ve just gone with the first idea that popped in my head: if it looks dirty, it must be dirty.
But my scientist brain couldn’t take less than 5 seconds to process and arrive at an answer. In five seconds, it analytically deduced that in order to answer the first question, I first needed to answer a deeper question, “How dirty is too dirty for a sponge?”
Not so simple now, am I right?
I gave the sponge a good look from all sides. It seemed like washing it in the water had removed a lot of the dirt and grime on the surface, and the soap had taken care of the odor, so just by looking at it you couldn’t really tell how long it had been used for.
For the most part, it looked like a decent sponge. However, something inside me was not convinced. So I opened the sink cabinet below, took out a fresh new sponge, and kept it beside the old one. That’s when it hit me.
Tolerance was the second bitch.
The question had never been how shitty the sponge was. The real question was, how much shit could “I” tolerate before deciding it was time to throw it away?
Looking at the two sponges side by side, it took my brain only 0.1 seconds to realize that the right time to throw away the old sponge was more than a few weeks ago.
Moments before, I was ready to pass that old, dirty sponge as a usable one. But now, with a brand new sponge serving as a benchmark by the side, I could notice every small difference between the two and truly see how disgusting it had become.
In life, we often follow a pattern in our habits, perceptions, and beliefs.
In that revelatory moment, I realized that my tolerance for shit may have been high not just for dirty sponges but also several relationships that had gone bad a long time ago.
Sweeping lessons
Keeping things beyond their expiration date carries a risk to our physical and mental health—whether it be objects or relationships. I know I’m not alone when I say this, because at some point in our lives I’m sure we all fall prey to this behavior, not realizing when it is time to let go, or to even throw something or someone out of our lives.
The human mind is a beautiful piece of machinery, designed to adapt and adjust to the incremental degradation of objects and events surrounding it. Because if that wasn’t the case, we would’ve never been able to survive through the millions of years of evolution, finding a way to live through the toughest calamities and predators, or an unfathomably polluted world.
Our tolerance for shit is very high and for us to draw a definite line between good and bad, we keep waiting for a clear discriminator to show up in front of us.
But how is that supposed to happen when we keep pushing our boundaries repeatedly, comparing things with only their most recent past that we had already tolerated and become accustomed to, making it increasingly difficult to justify not doing it one more time? How is that supposed to happen, when we keep cleaning the grime of the relationship with a combination of optimism and benefit of the doubt, accepting to live with the dirty sponge again and again?
I understand. Sometimes the only way to know is by making that comparison—holding a brand new sponge in your other hand. That means, consciously reflecting and analyzing exactly what is the meaning of a “good friend”, a “good partner”, or a “good family member”, among others, and if the person on the other end is actually living up to those expectations.
For without knowing what something is like when it is good, you could never tell if it has actually gone bad.
Fortunately for me, I made that critical assessment last year and it brought me a lot of peace and happiness.
The amount of emotional garbage you tolerate from other people must be limited. It is inevitable that we’ll all collect some, and perhaps even give some, as part of living in a society. But it should be our job to periodically clean Life out just like our homes.
Doing dishes with a dirty sponge and then ignorantly pondering what makes our lives stink, is nothing less than a fool’s errand.
*****
Cover photo by Jess Zoerb on Unsplash
