Do you ever feel like you are cheating if you get help?
Are you one to stop and ask for directions if it’s clear you’re lost—or when the GPS appears to be misleading, you?
Or, does that feel like some form of cheating—maybe even something that robs you of the opportunity to use your directional smarts to figure things out on your own?
Are you convinced that hand-chopped vegetables have more flavor than those that have passed under the blade of the food processor? That somehow putting those vegetables in a machine extracts your loving care right out of the food?
What is your stance on dishwashers?
Every time we would move back to the United States after living abroad without a dishwasher, I tended to disdain the need for such technology. I had grown accustom to doing the dishes as I went along and, for the most part, it was quick and efficient.
But then, gradually I would start to use the dishwasher and within a short period of time, I would wonder how I ever got along without it—so much time saved.
Of course, that time washing dishes was also the time when I would look out the window and absorb the shimmering light of the sinking sun while listening to the announcements and traditional melodies over the neighborhood sound system. But that is point for another reflection at another time.
This invitation to rest is about not overlooking tools that might ease the background noise of our days or just outright help us to do things more easily.
There is no recommendation here for a specific tool – just an invitation to think about what might help.
Our employer is remodeling the apartment that we will live in (we have been in an we have been in a guest house) and then and we have decided to invest in a dishwasher. I want to have people over and I want them to eat on real plates. It is so easy to just stick a plate in a dishwasher and be done with it
(Except when it isn’t, and then by all means, let’s use those disposable plates
One way to discover (or embrace) a helpful tool is to observe the people around and notice what works for them.
My stand on dishwashers underwent a subtle shift when my good friend, Ni, was visiting the U.S. from Thailand and observed this ubiquitous kitchen tool.
At the time, she and her husband were just beginning construction on a magnificent home and she hadn’t thought about putting in a dishwasher—until she stayed in a home with one and saw how useful the tool proved to be.
When I visited Ni in her new home a couple of years ago, she confirmed that she had no regrets.
I have long admired Ni’s smarts and intentionality (especially in child rearing) and I realized that I had been carrying this unconscious sense of domestic nobility when I functioned without a dishwasher.
I am happy to have shed that.
Is there anything in your life that, on a regular basis, feels wearing? Something small and insignificant, but if you could address it, it would be like suddenly turning off an annoying background noise you thought didn’t bother you. Something actually using up valuable resources from your internal landscape?
Something like soggy lettuce leaves?
The salad spinner in the picture for this reflection was not an expensive item, but it was over-budget enough that buying it felt like an unnecessary luxury.
We eat our fair share of greens and every time I take them out of the vinegar wash, plop them in the salad spinner basket, and push down a few times on the knob at the top, I have this little thrill that is amplified when we bite into fresh and crunchy leaves
I think of that moment in the store a couple of months ago when I agonized over whether or not I would spend that much money on something so simple—and I thank myself for buying it.
I also wonder if there are any other tools that would make my daily life more restful – because it’s the little things that impact our big experience in ways we don’t even realize.
Here’s to finding your perfect tools. May you rest and may your rest be sweet.
Alicia