Opposites

06/16/2019

The worst part about washing dishes is that it never ends. No matter how well or how quickly I do them, as soon as I finish, there’s another load to do — and I still have to clean up after my cleaning up, before I can clean up some more. But why doesn’t some other never-ending activity feel so much easier? Eating three times a day doesn’t take as much activation energy as rolling up my sleeves and scrubbing away at the dishes. What makes it more enjoyable, more palatable (pun only slightly intended)? Is it the variety of the food? The pleasure that I get from many of the bites? Is it the aroma? The company? The satisfaction? Even if it’s all of these things, or none of them, why doesn’t doing the dishes feel the same? I’m not sure if it’s a mental game or a survival one.

Gosh this is a boring exposé. We’ve all read the zen books or heard the lectures on mindfully washing the dishes, to wash the dishes. I don’t need to be another voice in the world spewing the same thing as has been said time and time again. The experiential click that I had today about washing the dishes to wash the dishes was spawned from these questions though. Why is it that the the perpetual cycle of washing dishes is any different than the perpetual cycle of, say, eating? What is it that triggers a feeling of disgruntlement and dread at the end of a meal when we face even a small set of dirty dishes and not a the beginning when we face another small set of full dishes? Is it that we are focused on different parts of the place-setting before us? On different tasks at hand, with different goals — one to revive oneself, and one to revive another? Is the difference really in our minds — washing dishes is a chore — , or does it come down to biology, evolution, survival — food is life? What happens if we swap these phrases:

food is a chore.

washing dishes is life.

How does that feel?

Food, survival, even biology become baseline. Washing dishes becomes a pursuit for the few, who eat food so that they can wash the dishes. These are the base and the point of Maslow’s Hierarchy: physiological needs and self-actualization.

Perhaps everything can be turned upside-down and become its opposite. Or perhaps everything already is its own opposite.