By Jesse Stewart, Staff Writer
Far rarer than oil, money, or love, time seems to be the scarcest resource of all. There never seems to be quite enough to go around, despite an abundance of machines designed to free our hands, minds, and attention. Technology helps clear our schedules more than ever before, yet we feel busier than we’ve ever been. It seems that there’s not enough hours in the day, but what if I told you that you already own an instrument that can help you slow the sands of time?
There are approximately eighty million dishwashers in the United States and, if you ask me, that’s about eighty million too many. In numerous polls, half of all Americans feel anxiety due to a perception of not having enough time in the day, despite more than 75% of all households owning a dishwasher, a machine designed for the expressed purpose of freeing up the user’s obligations to cleaning their cutlery and tableware.
The Industrial Revolution promised us that machines would take over the menial duties that burdened human beings, who would then possess more time for thinking, dreaming, loving, and all of those other pesky requirements for peace of mind. But, instead, the Revolution only seemed to grant those that owned the machines more money to buy the other machines and lease them to us at steadily increasing prices. You win some, you lose some; but, until the next Revolution, you can practice liberating your schedule by taking back the ‘pointless’ burdens from the machines, and why not start with the dishwasher?
I once lived in a country where no household, no matter how wealthy or poor, owned a dishwasher. I was quite busy with my work but was forced to spend twenty minutes each day cleaning the food from my plates, knowing full well I would simply do the exact same exercise the following day. One could describe the motions of lathering a dish with soap, scrubbing it clean, and wiping it dry as ‘mindless’, but that’s only if you choose not to use your mind.
Tasseography is a fortune-telling method that involves pouring tea into a cup, draining the liquid, and reading the tea leaves on the bottom for patterns and symbolic guidance. If you see a heart, then maybe love is on the horizon but if you spot a snake then perhaps you should be prepared for betrayal. This practice is, by any metric, complete nonsense that no machine would ever be programmed for, nor would any sane human being take instruction from. However, finding inspiration or perspective in a misshapen illusion, be it the shape of a cloud or hue of a sunset, is not an exercise in delusion but imagination and vulnerability.
I’m enrolled in a university and am employed at two companies, so there exist very few grains of free time in the hourglass that hangs from me like an anchor. However, I wash my dishes thoroughly and carefully each day despite the fact that my American apartment has a perfectly functional dishwasher just beside the sink. I may spend twenty minutes a day doing this, all to the seeming-detriment of the precious unencumbered moments that I reach for otherwise. Why?
Every so often, I can look at the bubbles on my dinner plate and read into them like tea leaves. My computer instructs me to inspect an email, just as my phone orders me to open a text message, but I find that the suds on my dish often have surprising suggestions about what my time would be better spent on. Succeeding in your work often involves looking into a screen for the answers, but solutions to what ail you in life, death, and the love between are often found in the sink. Food may be required to sustain life, but cleaning its residue causes you to reflect on the consequences of your consumptions.
The human brain operates using a structure of pattern recognition. We’re all very talented when it comes to receiving and executing commands because doing so requires very little thought. However, your thoughts are not only what separate you from machines but also the only tangible resource that define you. I can trace maybe a third of all of the best ideas I’ve ever had to the thoughts that creep into my consciousness only when it is occupied with something simple.
Only the wealthy have the money to build a zen garden and the time to meditate there. Not all of us can live near some tranquil lake and guess what the clouds in its reflection are trying to tell us. But for the rest of us, no matter how busy, no matter how many projects or tests or obligations that seem to vie for our attention, can each create our own private pond in the kitchen and look into those misshapen soap clouds for inspiration. By no means would a machine ever detect a dream hidden in your dishes, but that’s because it acts without thinking, simply scrubbing away the sands of time rather than letting them accumulate into some malformed fantasy, one which only you can find the pearls of an idea inside…
…Plus, they never really wash off ALL of the barbeque sauce on your plate, you know? Gross.