Saved by the Dirty Dishes

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!
What happens when your day starts with a big Arrrggghhh? You know, the one that feels nothing like peaceful or serenity now or the universe has my back. The one where everything you start doesn’t get finished because each task leads to another and another…and another until you don’t remember where you started, only that you’ve ended up in a giant wormhole.
Can you tell I’ve been having one of these days? That I’ve spent all morning going from the phone to websites, to online verification codes back to phone texts into manila folders and files and then to email? Well, I have. Which is why I’m sitting here typing this now. And why I’d like to share is what happened in between the Arrrggghhh! and this moment: The transition period.
First came the build-up: The DOING. The THINKING. The FIGURING OUT. “I have to find it, I have to figure out what to do, I need to get more information, I wish I were more organized, I should know how to do this.” In other words, all the judgment that says I should be more, know more, and do more.
Fortunately, at some point during this process, Sherri Cortland’s email showed up with her Windows of Opportunity newsletter to remind me of all the goodness in the world, and I smiled. Then I received a touching email of validation from a coaching client who said I’d changed her life. Wow. I realized my shoulders had been up to my ears only when I felt them descend. Then I got up and moved away from my files and my desk and my thoughts.
Oh, for the therapy of washing dishes! What a lovely mindless, yet productive way to push the reset button. After the dishes, I cleaned a bathroom. While I was cleaning the bathroom I thought about my BFF since childhood who I haven’t seen in three years and who’s coming to visit tomorrow. Which made me think about how happy I am to have painted the room where she’ll be staying, and feeling how grateful I am to have such loving, long-lasting friendship. At which point, I dipped back into my files (computer and hard)…and still could not find what I was looking for.
I stopped again when I found I was cursing out loud. This time, I ate an apple (yummy, nice and crunchy). I watched a youtube video (a tarot reading that promised only good news). And then it hit me. All I needed to do was email one person who’d have exactly what I needed at her fingertips.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know the feeling of the ah-ha moment that arrives when you’re in the shower or brushing your teeth or performing some other menial task because you’ve let that darn mind go for the moment and let in whatever needed to make itself known in the first place.
Walking my talk as a spiritual guide is paramount as I go about my daily life. What matters is the understanding that we never really get “there” because there is no “there.” There is only and ever the evolution of our conscious awareness, one day at a time…one moment to the next…one dish at a time.