If you’re doing the dishes
Salut, Skol, Slàinte – although these are words overheard infrequently in the draconian days of January, if you’ve been lucky enough to raise a glass recently, you might also have been bullied into staring into the eyes of your fellow drinkers. It’s a thing, now – blame the youth. As someone with depth perception ‘issues’ I try to convince the maligned (youth, always the youth) in my company that they’d be better off with the shards of glass in the vessel than picking them out of their wine.
Barbara Windsor has great eye-contact
I’m not disputing that eye-contact is vital, like a soft pat on the back, a handshake, an acknowledgement that one sees and is seen. It’s essential. It’s human. And there’s no doubt that being human is something increasingly priceless, particularly in the world of customer service. Incidentally, Vodafone, I don’t think I’m the only proclaimer who would walk 500 hundred miles to be in the presence of the excellent humans who rent you their labour on Edinburgh’s Princes Street, rather than repeating myself ad nauseam in a let’s go through security, phone call.
Let’s not go through security. Let’s be human, let’s hold presence for one another. And yes youths, cheers for the eye-contact prompt, the best indicator that we’re in space and time together. Why is it so hard then, to maintain presence when we are left to our own devices. When we are walking, washing up, waking up? Why do we have casts of thousands from our past and future strutting about the stages of our minds?
On a Wild Wonder retreat in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, January 2024, photo Andrea Scher
For the past 14 years I have attempted to declutter my headspace by meditating. I’ve ‘done’ Jon Kabat Zin, Be Mindful, Headspace, Jon Kabat Zin, Calm, Be Mindful again, Plum Village, Medito, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, CAC and am back to Jon Kabat Zin. They all say it’s OK – don’t strive, just turn up, just practice, drop in to your body. I’ve done yoga,, lots, and qigong, and I can tell you that lao gong in the centre of your palm (palace of toil) is an acupressure point and minor chakra, and if you concentrate on it you will feel heat build, and if you then place your warmed hands on your chest and abdomen, you can carry the sense of openness and awareness into your torso for as long as you like. I have done this. It is wonderful. Yet, for all the exhausting non-striving, I retain a mind like a dropped kebab on Airdrie main street (image Adrienne Nicol).
I have read Zen Buddhist, Thich Nat Hahn’s advice: if you’re doing the dishes, do the dishes – do them with love, connect with your ancestors – are these your grandmother’s hands with which you scrub? I would love to think so - I never met my paternal grandmother, who raised a family of 8.
Paternal grandparents Barney and Frances Sweeney
But I think Thich Nat Hahn’s advice is excellent and occasionally I remember to go around the house mumbling, if you’re doing the hoovering, do the hoovering, if you’re opening the fridge door, open the fridge door, if you’re gorging on brownies…
I know that I’m not the only human doing, rather than human being. I’m not going to grab a late-diagnosis ADHD label at the checkout. I am just a work in progress, trying to slow down, to be more present.
Presence is surely our life’s work. That’s why there is no shortage of poems about presence. But I thought this one for today, was ideal
You Reading this, be ready
“Starting here, what do you want to remember
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for the time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?”
Luckily, I turned around, and saw these: the rose lifted from the compost heap, the droplets of ice melting on the daphne bud, January sunrise through the trees, and of course Dolly, ever present.
What do you see, as you turn around
