And I thought, Why am I
rushing? And how many times a day do I do this rushing? I realized with some
alarm that I am so in love with the relax that I am rushing, panicked to
accomplish all my chores in an attempt to achieve the ultimate chore reward—the
relax. So I thought about it and was reminded of that old classic tune ... “Whistle
while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini bit his weenie, now it doesn’t work.”
... sorry, got off track there with memories of grade three recess.
What I thought about was
The Seven Dwarfs (should I have capped that?). Is that their official moniker—The Seven Dwarfs?
I thought of their peppy
happy little song, sans Hitler. What I really thought of was this idea of being
happy at your work. I don’t mean your artistic work, your “trained for” work,
your passionate work. I mean your toilet cleaning, counter wiping work. I mean
the work that never ends. Hmmm, another song comes to mind. “It just goes on
and on, my friends”...
I’m talking the crap
work, you know what I mean. I strived to break the Olympic record for the empty
dishwasher-clean stove-sweep floor-athon. Although I missed a shot at the
podium, I was chuffed at achieving my personal best. Then it hit me. I was
rushing to relax. These cleanup minutes have become empty time. They hold no
value to me because I am simply getting through them. Am I really truly going
to throw these moments away?
No. I need to pimp my
clean. I need for it not to be the
lousy wasted moments of my life. So tonight as I cleaned up, I put on Annie
Lennox and I danced around the kitchen as I sashayed with the clean pots and
pans, worthy partners all. I am vowing to take the piss out of tidy, the crap
out of clean. I am going to rock that garbage disposal till it screams for limp
scallion stems.
Although the Seven Dwarfs
got second billing, they had it goin’ on.
Barbara: Ha! I do very
much relate to this, Deb, as I have found myself, on many an occasion, rushing
through my chores. Or worse, nursing a sense of stress that I’m not doing them
quickly enough, or that I haven’t yet gotten to them, or that as soon as I’ve
done it, I will have to do it all over again. Why do I (we) get so stressed
about something as simple and fundamentally non-taxing as The Chore? Deb, I love
your Personal Best, Seven Dwarfs initiative! In fact, it reminds me of
something a yoga instructor once told me: when you do a chore (ie, like washing
a dish), it’s the best time to unwind and put yourself in the moment. Take that
dish and really observe it as you clean it, really, as corny as it sounds, be
in that moment. With your dancing and singing, Deb, you’ve shown us how to do
it. Now if only I could get you to tape yourself doing it and post it here so we
can really see how you do it :)
