It was December and our helper had taken time off to spend time with her family, and my wife and I were on leave.
Although I completely suck at chores, I had decided this was the year I would be helpful around the house. So I picked up the washing basket, went off to the laundry room and put the laundry in the washing machine. I took a random handful of clothes, put them in the machine and eventually found the on/off button which I pressed and walked away into the house to make breakfast.
As I finished making breakfast my wife asked, “Did you sort the clothes out by colour?”
My response was, “Uhhhhmmm … let me go and check.”
I dashed off to the laundry room, pressed every button I could see to stop this machine and managed to get the machine jammed. I hadn’t sorted the clothes by colour. I knew for a fact that my black shirt was in there with her white skirt and now this thing was stuck.
Having tried everything that day, I eventually called the washing machine manufacturer and their technician only arrived two days later and by then the clothes were soggy, smelly, needed to be rewashed and the white skirt now had a fancy design on it. My wife then took over the washing and I was asked very nicely to rather help with hanging them on the line, and this I gladly did.
As the clothes came out of the washing machine, I took them one at a time, got a couple of pegs and hung them up on the washing line to dry. There were jeans, which are quite heavy, T-shirts, dresses, baby clothes, skirts, tops of different colours, socks and work shirts. Now this is one of those washing lines that looks like a square and has lines from the centre going outwards. I had started with the short lines in the middle and worked my way outwards until the line was full.
I then took a step back to look at the good job I had just done and then a thought came to my mind. I wonder how many of our lives look like this washing line. I wonder how many of us live life carrying heavy jeans, T-shirts, stained clothing, dirty socks, other people’s trousers and, dare I say, underwear.
For many of us, we have gone through life collecting these pieces of clothing. We have hung them up and lived life like the square washing line – heavy, angry, slow to move, inflexible, always looking back at who hurt us and making sure we keep these clothes as a reminder of how bad they made us feel … self-destruction?
The evening came and being on my best behaviour I had set a reminder on my phone and was not about to forget to take the clothes off the line. When I was done with this, I had another look at the washing line and it was empty. ‘This is how I would like to live my life’, I thought to myself.
This week’s task is simple: Check what’s on your washing line and take those pieces of clothing off one at a time until it is empty. How? Good question … All I know is this one thing, a heavy life sucks more than I do at chores and all these pieces of clothing take up room in your life that could otherwise be used for good.
Details: www.theseedsa.org
