Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Stillness

By the kitchen sink sits an accumulation of unwashed, reusable plastic cups. The other day I realized that I had stopped washing dishes. Some of the cups I have used once – and only to drink water. When I stop and think about the situation, it’s hard to fight the urge to stop what I’m doing, take a soapy sponge and devote the next two minutes of my life to transferring the accumulation of cups into the drying rack at the other end of the sink.

But what if cleanliness, despite its purported proximity to godliness, isn’t the point? What if the point were to see each of those cups as a moment, and the accumulation of cups as the passing of time? What if seeing the accumulation of cups were necessary, in order to grasp how much time had passed? What if the only way to gain perspective on time were to fight the urge to slosh soap in used water cups – to fight the urge to be busy?

Not doing simple tasks like washing water cups often feels like sheer laziness – and lot of times, that’s all it is.

Being still can be a lot of work too, though. When I’m busy, I don’t spend much time contemplating the significance of plastic dishware.

1 comment:

Jed Carosaari said...

And some recent studies are indicating that the Western and peculiarly American fascination with cleanliness may actually be to our detriment. Not only are we helping many bacteria and viruses evolve resistances to antibiotics with our use of cleansers, but we are less exposed to harmful germs, and so don't develop a resistance to them. We are now starting to see some diseases that don't cause problems in the 2/3rds World, come and afflict those in the 1st World, because of our hypercleanliness. Cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but it also appears to be next to E. bola and E. coli.