Minutia v1.1
What if folding laundry is really important?
What if, today, when I folded my laundry, it was important that I did so with care and attention?
What if, folding laundry deserves as much care and attention as anything else?
Everything is a metaphor. (For what? I don't know. But everything is a metaphor.)
Everything we touch is a metaphor for our self: the way we make our bed (or don't make it at all), the way our jeans crease, the shape and depth of the bags under our eyes, the length and trace of a lingering glance when a beautiful person passes by, the amount of sugar one puts in tea, the type of tea one drinks, one's gait, one's pace, one's posture, and one's cadence of speech.
Is your laundry piled? Is it unfolded or dirty? Has it grown mold yet? Is it perfectly tucked away in a cedar scented drawer? Whatever it is, it is a metaphor.
I'm not saying that you should go clean your room. Maybe it's fine the way it is. I searched my heart, and I found that living in filth is okay, and living in squalor is okay, and living in wealth is okay, and living in an immaculate perfectly decorated home full of love is okay.
But worry is not okay. (i.e. my constant sense of anxiety and despair.)
Suffering is not okay.
Suffering, I think, violates our principle of everything as a metaphor. Because, I have found no metaphor for the experience of suffering. Suffering is, at most, perhaps, a signal that something is wrong. But the experience of suffering and the corresponding mental associations are unreliable.
However, through metaphor, we can transmute suffering into something meaningful or aesthetic.
Suffering is a constant. Suffering is like a note in the chord that is life.
Are we folding laundry? Or are we ordering and laying to rest ideas that are strewn about cluttering our living (and thinking) space?
I don't know. But I have some real, non-metaphorical laundry to fold this evening and the next.
What if, today, when I folded my laundry, it was important that I did so with care and attention?
What if, folding laundry deserves as much care and attention as anything else?
Everything is a metaphor. (For what? I don't know. But everything is a metaphor.)
Everything we touch is a metaphor for our self: the way we make our bed (or don't make it at all), the way our jeans crease, the shape and depth of the bags under our eyes, the length and trace of a lingering glance when a beautiful person passes by, the amount of sugar one puts in tea, the type of tea one drinks, one's gait, one's pace, one's posture, and one's cadence of speech.
Is your laundry piled? Is it unfolded or dirty? Has it grown mold yet? Is it perfectly tucked away in a cedar scented drawer? Whatever it is, it is a metaphor.
I'm not saying that you should go clean your room. Maybe it's fine the way it is. I searched my heart, and I found that living in filth is okay, and living in squalor is okay, and living in wealth is okay, and living in an immaculate perfectly decorated home full of love is okay.
But worry is not okay. (i.e. my constant sense of anxiety and despair.)
Suffering is not okay.
Suffering, I think, violates our principle of everything as a metaphor. Because, I have found no metaphor for the experience of suffering. Suffering is, at most, perhaps, a signal that something is wrong. But the experience of suffering and the corresponding mental associations are unreliable.
However, through metaphor, we can transmute suffering into something meaningful or aesthetic.
Suffering is a constant. Suffering is like a note in the chord that is life.
Are we folding laundry? Or are we ordering and laying to rest ideas that are strewn about cluttering our living (and thinking) space?
I don't know. But I have some real, non-metaphorical laundry to fold this evening and the next.
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