#5 — Pleasure, mastery, and how to properly clean a coffee filter
Cleaning: An education
If there's one thing we all have in common, it's our idiosyncrasies. Take my neighbour, for example, who not infrequently straddles her 7th floor apartment window sill to make sure she catches edges of dust unbeknownst to most (save for maybe a handful of birds and indiscriminate cockroaches). From splitting a chalkboard-lined, basement "bedroom" in residence at Queen's with two other girls to hiring cleaners in my late twenties, I thought I'd seen it all when it comes to cleaning. I was wrong. Brasilians take it to another level.
Personally, I'm more of a clean it when it's dirty kinda person and because I've always had a slice of personal space -- a dominion I was content overseeing with the unbothered zeal of an elementary school secretary a month away from retirement -- it's never really been a problem. But married life with your in-laws en route is different. My partner, Marcos, and I had to clean-clean.
"It's spiritual for me and my wife," my father-in-law said, as I thanked him for pulling hair out of the drain (I hadn't even had my coffee yet). I clenched my teeth as he showed me how to properly (his words, not mine) scrape a coffee filter with the back of a spoon only to, in short order, drop my jaw in astonishment at the dazzling miracle my mother-in-law brought about in the bathroom. I had yet to brush my teeth. It occurred to me there something different is happening here -- for them, cleaning isn't a task but rather an extension of care.
The culmination of pleasure and progress.
The spiritual dimension of cleaning is no novel insight -- it's long-established and sufficiently Netflixified (though I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I haven't watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo). Witnessing the extent to which cleaning was basically part of getting ready for my in-laws, I couldn't help but notice it was neither a chore nor a task, but simply a part of their lives as much as toilet paper, traffic lights, and taxes.
Thinking about cleaning as an inevitability rather than a to-do made me consider all the ways we attempt to mechanize or automate whatever gets in the way of us pursuing what brings us pleasure or progress. In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) I learned an effective way to improve our mood is to incorporate "pleasure" and "mastery" tasks. Pleasure tasks bring us positive, enjoyable feelings and mastery tasks provide a sense of accomplishment. Sure, we want and benefit from pleasure and progress, but what about everything that's in between?
In one of my all-time favourite books, The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan Watts writes,
"For all pleasures are present, and nothing save complete awareness of the present can even begin to guarantee future happiness."
If there's one thing pleasure and mastery tasks have in common, it's the present.
^^ Marcos's great aunt cleaning a traditional Brasilian coffee filter
^^ Copo Americano -- little, teeny glasses traditionally used for both beer and hot coffee here
A couple of months into our relationship, I came home and Marcos had cleaned my bedroom top to bottom, inside-out and back again. Dusted the books, vacuumed under the bed, polished my rocks and lined them up along the window sill to "recharge" (his words, not mine). Unexpected, generous, hand-made, and priceless. An otherwise forgettable day still sparkles in my mind's eye. Just because.
I'd love to hear your relationship (or lack thereof) with cleaning. Do you schedule or outsource cleaning, or do you wake-up like my in-laws with an embodied relationship with wherever it is you happen to find yourself?
Until next month! Beijos from Rio,
Jodi
“Her suffering, her resilient smile in the face of that suffering, my part in easing her suffering—this, this is the reason for everything. How many times must I be shown? This is why we’re here. To fight through the pain and, when possible, to relieve the pain of others. So simple. So hard to see."
- Andre Agassi in Open: A Memoir -
What I'm Reading (and Loving) Right Now
A Promised Land by Barack Obama ... that took a minute!
Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J. R. Moehringer
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez