Meditations

I read a fascinating idea recently:  When you’re facing a task that seems like a chore, call it a meditation — a laundry-folding meditation, a dishwashing meditation, a paper-grading meditation.    The chore gains some reflected glory from its new name.  Sometimes it even works.

Laundry folding:  that’s an activity that’s made for meditation.  It engages my senses.  The clothing is warm, fresh from the dryer.  T shirts feel soft, handknit socks dazzle with stripes.  It satisfies my most important standard for housework:  a pile of neatly folded laundry bears no resemblance to the jumbled basket I started with.  There’s an aesthetic challenge involved.  I try to fold symmetrically, to smooth items flat for neat stacks in dresser drawers or linen closet.  One morning I took a bulging sack of dirty clothes to a laundry on West 88th Street in New York.  When I returned in late afternoon, I received a tidy, compressed cube of clean clothes, folded as precisely as origami.  That’s my model.

And I must go now and practice my meditation skills.