Folding In The Moment

I hate dishes and laundry.  You can never catch up on them, they just keep coming.  And they show up at the worst times.  After dinner all I want to do is sit on the couch and relax until bed time, but there's that load of dishes waiting to be done so the sink is clear for tomorrow morning.  

And starting laundry is all well and good, shoving dirty in the washer is fairly satisfying if that's all you have to do.  But usually you have to move a wet load to the dryer first, which means you need to put away a load from the dryer before that.  Half an hour later I can finally put some smelly clothes in the washer...or maybe I could just sit down on the couch for a while.

But I've noticed over the years that when I finally get to the folding part of laundry, something funny sometimes happens.  My mind slows down, my thoughts focus on the thing I'm doing, and I find myself ...in the moment.  Like really right there, hearing the birds through the open window, listening to the kids giggling down the hall, or smelling the soft towels as I fold them into pretty fluffy stacks.  In that moment I realize that I'm so happy I could burst, that I have everything I've always wanted, a family, a home, warmth, and light and love.  In that moment the worries and stress recede to the back and peace and contentment become something tangible, like the tiny little T-shirts I'm sorting by size.

And let's be honest, it's these moments of zen that are the real highlights of life.  The big events tend to be fraught with stress and tension and expectations.  They might be great, and beautiful and perfect, but it's in the little moments of internal stillness that you can really appreciated all you have.  

So it seems that one of the tricks to happiness is to stop relaxing, get off the couch, and start doing some chores.  It's so counter-intuitive that it takes some time to figure it out, but it explains why my mom is always doing dishes when the rest of us are kicking back.