I read THE MIRACLE OF MINDFULNESS by Thich Nhat Hanh this week. The whole book hit hard, but this passage in particular is stuck in my mind:
Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. Follow your breath to prevent your mind from straying. Do not try to hurry to get the job over with. Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life. Washing the dishes is meditation. If you cannot wash the dishes in mindfulness, neither can you meditate while sitting in silence.
I used to know this. Trying to remember.
I remember reading Lloyd Alexander’s TARAN WANDERER in middle school and being deeply affected by the care and time and respect the story took in describing the everyday work of each person Taran encountered, and how explicit it made the notion that all work is equally valuable and important.
I remember being blown away in high school by a passage from a Tim Robbins novel in which a couple of characters choose to walk through the rain without flinching. They were going to get wet anyway. Might as well accept and embrace the experience.
I remember learning in college about improv comedy, reading about Zen Buddhism, and deeply feeling and experiencing the joy of being fully present in the moment, open to the world, connected to everything. I think I’ve continued to live that way in my creative work, always trying to be open to what feels true in the moment as I write.
But part of me has always been more striving than accepting, plowing through the water instead of gliding downstream. I write on deadline. I get things done. I make things happen.
My mom used to chide me for rushing in the kitchen. I’d often cook in a bit of a frenzy, moving fast, banging pans and plates around, turning to the next thing before fully setting the current thing down, spilling a little soy sauce, scattering some stray garlic. She moved more slowly and methodically, smiling and unrushed. I’ve gotten used to thinking of her ability to be present in the moment as a kind of compartmentalization. But even if she never used the word, I think she was practicing her version of mindfulness.
Since the pandemic, I’ve broken more bowls, plates, and glasses in the kitchen than I care to enumerate. I don’t know if I’ve been rushing more. But I’ve been… distracted. I remember receiving four precious grocery deliveries on a single spring day in 2020 and spending six hours in tense, anxious action, cutting up big slabs of meat and washing and freezing great bundles of green onions, garlic, and broccoli, then scrubbing and rescrubbing the floors and counters, desperately trying to remember what outside objects had touched what and where I’d stepped.
In some ways, that single day feels like an encapsulation of life in general since 2016.
It’s 2023. Everything’s gotten more complicated and stressful. The whole world’s a bit more shaky, and so am I, right? Of course I break more plates. But I still get things done. I make things happen.
But I’m trying to remember what I used to know.
Gonna start with washing the dishes.
