Thursday, October 25, 2012

in which I share an essay and give a plan of action

Greetings friendly readers of my blog!
I am sorry that I have taken such a long break since my last post. Sadly, it will probably be a long time before I post the next part of my story because I have reached another mental block where I completely hate it and feel like deleting everything. Rest assured I will not delete it, but I must let it sit for a while until I can revise it constructively.

In other news, I have decided to post my thoughts on random things for the next bit of time while I try to figure out what exactly to focus on in my blog. Expect to see more posts than recently (not too hard to imagine) and probably of differing styles as I will be experimenting like crazy!

Furthermore, I plan on posting some of my essays that I do for my writing class whenever I have or choose a topic of interest that turns into a halfway satisfying essay. Below is my most recently finished assignment in which I discuss one of my favorite pastimes. Enjoy!

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kristin


Daily Dance


At the threshold between the dining room and the kitchen, a young girl watches her family in awe. Dinner has ended and her older siblings move smoothly about in swift practiced maneuvers which bring brothers and sisters on crossing paths without collision. As the routine continues, the little girl pays close attention to everything knowing that someday soon, she too will help with the cleansing of the kitchen. Once they have put away the food and filled the dish washing machine, the real fun begins: hand washing dishes. More than just a necessary part of keeping a clean house, dish washing also helps the people who do it physically, relationally, and mentally.

Washing large dishes by hand benefits both the dishes and the person washing them. Many pots and pans do not fit in dishwashers, and even some dishes that do fit fade or bend out of shape in the high temperatures of the machine's cycles. By hand washing these dishes, a person can know for certain that the dishes will get clean with minimal damage. Benefits from this task expand beyond the preservation of the dishes: by immersing both hands in hot water multiple times a week, a person develops heat resistance which can prove useful outside the kitchen. For example, in my chemistry class last year I needed to move glass beakers with various fluids many times. Often the beaker had recently contained boiling water which heated the glass; one time other students had all the hot pads and I needed to move the beaker before everything inside burned and ruined the experiment. Because I had trained my hands to handle warmer dishes I could grab the beaker for a few seconds without dropping or spilling it and continued my experiment.

Due to the simplicity of the task, washing dishes alone gives the person a chance to think freely. For one thing, scrubbing dishes does not require much thought so instead of needing to focus on something specific for a bit of time students, parents, or whoever washes the dishes has a chance to think without any specific requirements. Personally many of my favorite writing projects began while I thought about anything random that came to mind while washing dishes. This task does more than free the mind though: the physical activity of scraping and scrubbing at the dirty dishes gets the blood flowing better throughout a persons whole body including the brain. Sitting somewhere just to think can give a certain amount of freedom to the brain, but not the same way as healthy exercise combined with freedom; these together make the perfect combination for contemplation and creativity.

People can enjoy cleaning dishes with others just as well as alone. For one thing, the task divides nicely between two or more people. After years of practice, my older brother and I have a perfectly synchronized routine where he washes dishes in the left of our double sink, sets them in the right sink to drip; from there I dry them and put them away. Often he can wash faster than I can try and place, so if his girlfriend visits and wants to help the two of us can dry without conflict. Because the task does not require words, we use this time for various forms of conversation: everything from mocking songs on the radio to debating what the Bible says about angels. Many of my favorite memories with my siblings took place in the kitchen with a red dish towel in my hand.

Possibly one of the best parts of cleaning dishes, finishing the job leaves the workers with the satisfying knowledge that they have accomplished something. Many things in life give less than solid results. Whether a school assignment or a work project, the daily activities of middle class families often leave a person wondering how the task turned out or if they might have done it better. Dishes, on the other hand, have two modes: clean and dirty. In a couple of hours or fewer, one person can transform counters with piles of dirty dishes into a sparkling room without a smudge in sight. This simple fact of having accomplished something often gives me a much needed break from my other work and allows me to return with a fresh perspective.

Society has lost sight of the value of simple, hard work. In a world where efficiency and machines have become the most important priority, many people forget the value of menial tasks. I freely admit that dishwashers often do a more thorough job of washing small dishes and flatware. But I feel no loss regarding the bigger items that cannot survive the machine's cycles. If not for those items, I would lose much satisfaction as well as time with my family and thoughts.