Lesson From The Dishwasher

So I'm standing next to the kitchen sink, washing dishes. It was relaxing. It was therapeutic. It was making my hands silky smooth. My wife walks in the kitchen, rolls her eyes, and points to the dishwasher. "Why do spend the time washing dishes, when we have a dishwasher? I just think that's silly", she opined. After getting home from a stressful 10 hour day at work, I gave an answer that would make any time management expert cringe. "I'm washing the dishes for the same reason I take long showers. If there's a chore to be done, I might as well enjoy it."

I grew up washing dishes. I did it everyday. I have many great memories doing it with my brothers. I can remember washing a dish and passing it to my left. My younger brother would then rinse it and pass it to our youngest brother, who would be ready to dry and store. We had a system. However the system had nothing to do with efficiency. Like typical boys having to do chores, we're were gonna make it fun, and always dangerous. I loved filling the sink with water and lots of soap. If it was my brother's turn to wash, then he had better be careful. Hidden under the soapy veil would be an entire set of steak knives, positioned for unsuspecting hands. Often times I would boil water on the stove, just to put in the dishwater. Nothing made washing dishes more fun, than the sight of bleeding 2nd degree burns. Eventually washing the dishes was something we looked forward to. Well I did.

I completely understood where my wife was coming from when she offered the use of our dishwasher. In her mind, there were many other things that I could have been doing, had I loaded the dishwasher. Had I worked quickly, I could have moved to the next item on the list, and then the next. But do the lists ever end? What guarantee do we have that after we are done, life will let us enjoy our evening, weekend, or vacation? We only have control of now. We have no guarantee of our next year, week, day, or even hour. The truth is, we will only be as happy as we want to be RIGHT NOW. Life isn't about who can do the most, but who can enjoy it more.

There will always be folks who have more money, friends, and talents than I do. I can't change that. But I can change what I have. Is it better to have 500 myspace friends or 3 close friends that you can share your life with? Well, I confess that I don't have either. But that's a blog for another day. Will I embrace a life of quantity, or a life of quality? King Solomon answered this question in the book of Ecclesiastes.

"There is another serious problem I have seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver. Money is put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one’s children. We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can’t take our riches with us." Ecc 5:13

"There is another serious tragedy I have seen under the sun, and it weighs heavily on humanity. God gives some people great wealth and honor and everything they could ever want, but then he doesn’t give them the chance to enjoy these things. They die, and someone else, even a stranger, ends up enjoying their wealth! This is meaningless—a sickening tragedy." Ecc 6:1

I don't remember who said it, but I will always remember this quote. "I have never prayed for an entire hour. However, I have never gone an entire hour without praying" Please give yourselves permission to enjoy every minute of your life. Make a conscience decision to start squeezing every drop of purpose out of your money, relationships, and talents. Don't forget to squeeze some fun out of it too. Even if it puts the dishwasher out of work.