*Louise**
Iron Photographer 72
No one ever tells you this, but doing the dishes can save your life. When your mind is swirling with regrets and recriminations, and not even sleep can banish the voices that curse the day you were born, putting your hands in a warm sinkful of soapy water and scrubbing might be the only thing standing in between you and a long fall.
It’s like this: When you start, things are dirty. When you finish, they’re clean. There is a task to be done, and it has steps, and you know how to perform them. You can do it well, because it’s not hard. You can do it slowly, because unless you’re in the back of a diner at 10am on a Sunday, no one’s clamoring for your clean dishes. You can get lost in the automatic motions, slipping into a silence so profound it seems to stop time. With your hands busy, your brain is still.
And that’s how doing the dishes can be the spiritual miracle you’ve been looking for. It won’t last forever, mind—it’s not a cure. But it’s a prescription for a really bad morning, or a really long night. And no one will tell you not to take it.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, meerasethi and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
