Washing Machines, Golden Retrievers, and Big Questions
Exploring the art of treating yourself and others with warmth, respect, and love
Dear Reader
Content warning: gratuitous use of dog photos. With thanks to all the dogs concerned!
It’s Sunday now. My youngest daughter and her partner have landed back in the UK and my heart is full to bursting with the joy of their visit. Moving through the quieter house, piling sheets in the top loading washer, their presence is still here, though fading. Time to savour all we’ve shared over the last twelve days. I’m feeling such deep joy and blessings from their visit.
An atmospheric river is forecast to settle over Western Washington tomorrow, a term I’d never come across before emigrating here to the US. It sounds apocalyptic but also like something from another realm. A river in the sky? Here on the ground it means heavy rain, highest levels in the Cascades and the Olympics, avalanche warnings in the mountains, flood alerts, high winds and possible power cuts. With January being unusually dry and February often cold and bright, we haven’t seen these kind of downpours and high winds since the run of storms in November.
This post is slowly making its way from seed idea to publish ready post. I like it when they sit and simmer a while.
I wanted to write about the top loading washing machines here and the fact I haven’t seen a single line of washing outside since I arrived and have only just registered that fact talking to my Mum this morning. Are clothes lines not universal? My Mum loves seeing clothes blowing in the line on a sunny day. Today, doing guest laundry gives me the chance to share these small details with you! We hang clothes on airers and dry sheets and towels in the tumble dryer. It works but it’s not the same!
The post is nearly ready and it’s a bumper issue. If you can’t see it all in your email, hit the VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE button. It first hit my Substack dashboard as a draft on Friday…
Friday morning and the sky is leaden grey with a slight breeze stirring the drooping branches of the cedars. The landscape appears drab at first glance and yet how could it ever be drab? The snowy peaks are sharp today, not against a brilliant cerulean blue sky but against a depth of luminescent grey that suggests infinity nonetheless. As usual I am here pulling the draft of six days ago, together for publication. I like to write and then let the post incubate for a while.
Sunday 16th February
It’s late on Sunday evening, still my birthday! Snug on the lower ground floor, I’ve picked up my laptop, though it ’s late, to capture ideas percolating. The weather has changed from sub zero crisp sunny days to warmer, misty drizzle. I feel right at home after twenty two years living in West Wales, UK.
It’s been a day of warmth and connection, a little retreat into hurt feelings and a swift return to warmth and love. Loved ones around me, buckwheat pancakes, a walk in the rain, fancy lunch and time spent reading and writing. My heart is full.
I’m so enjoying reading on Substack. There’s such a wealth of thoughtful, engaging writing on a diverse range of subjects. I’m drawn to the writers curious about using imagination in the infinite ways we can use it. A new to me writer I discovered this week
had a line in her post, The Deep Ethics of Optimism in On the Commons publication that got me pondering.‘Reward and cultivate behaviour that brings care back to the core of human life.’
How would I cultivate behaviour to bring care back into the core of my life and what behaviours would they be?
I began with the usual watch words:
notice, appreciate, wonder, say yes to my experience
Then it widened out. Thanks to Paul my husband for this one, ask myself:
‘Would I treat a guest like this?’
For me close in relationships have always been more challenging than relationships with friends, acquaintances and strangers. For others it might be the opposite. So how would it be to treat loved ones like guests?
The enquiry widened …
“How would it be to treat all matter: creatures, plants, trees, rocks, ideas, sensations as guests?”
To make them feel welcome, to feed and shelter them with love before they go on their way? With the mind and the jumble of unruly thoughts and emotions it is easy to to want to shut the door on those we deem unpleasant or inappropriate but probably they just need a cup of tea like all the others. A brief respite, the warmth of human connection and then they’ll be on their way.
“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.”from The Guesthouse by Jalaluddin Rumi. Read full poem
The guest theme broadened.
What if I act as a guest in my own life?
A guest in my mind? In this world? How would I behave differently? To treat my life, my mind with courtesy and respect, how would that look and feel?
How would a golden retriever show up?
In case we need a reminder, ask, how would a Golden Retriever show up? Really can you imagine a Golden Retriever ever showing up with anything other than adoring devotion and love? What would happen if we showed up to life and each other that way?
The paradox of self and other
Something I’m curious about - what happens when we cultivate care for beings beyond ourselves and our inner circle? Does the same thing happen when we cultivate care for our own souls?
Are they, at one level, the same thing?
In times of great fear, we tend towards separation and isolation, gripping tightly to instincts to survive whether or not we are in mortal danger. When we access a deeper sense of love and connectedness we naturally tend towards care and compassion for those around us.
What if we start where we are: with the people in our lives, in our community, the things in our homes, the plants and animals in our vicinity. What if we tended to these things, lightly, lovingly and with joy? What then?
Then more specific actions occurred to me:-
Look for ways to ease others’ path
A while ago I read something about Japanese habits and one of them stuck. It was, push your chair back in after you leave the table. Why? Because you make the server’s life easier. Something about this, took me out of my little world and into a bigger world, a brighter more caring world. It tickled me.
Not pushing the chair in could be a reaction to restrictive house rules where a parent or carer nagged you to be tidy or considerate. Interestingly, nagging and should sends me in the opposite direction - self centred and constricted whether I’m the nagger or naggee.
I mostly do this as a matter of course now, push my chair in at home and out and about. I notice it eases the path of other diners, or other people in my home as well as servers. There’s no should there. It’s become a natural behaviour rather than a performative one. I have no investment in whether anyone else does it or whether anyone notices. It gives me pleasure. In fact now it would feel odd not to do it.
An aside: now I think of it, Dr Linda Pettit also spoke of emptying a waste bin in a hotel room to make the staff’s job easier in a blog post she wrote. I was struck by the fact I had never thought of doing that.
In a transactional world we feel entitled to behave in certain ways because we’ve paid money to use a hotel room for example but at the human level, how little does it cost to ease someone’s path in these small ways and how deeply impactful would it be if this behaviour rippled and multiplied?
In many cafes here in Skagit County there are bussing stations where customers take used crockery after they finish a meal. There’s a place for waste and dirty dishes. Some places like Taco Time have given attention to creating minimal waste for landfill from their operations. There is some aspect of ‘us’ that I like about clearing the tables. We become co-creators of the space and service offered. The divide between consumer and provider gets blurred. There’s a reciprocity. It also connects us to incoming customers. We’ve played a part in the next diners’ experience making us less like lone satellites and more like constellations.
And what of our own path, what might it look like to ease our own path?
For me, I reflected that would look like paying more attention to small things I could do to make my spirit easier like, asking for help, getting quiet, sharing a laugh, taking a rest, getting outside, stretching, doing some deep breathing, being in service as often as it occurs to me. Letting myself be silly. Not second guessing myself.
Look for ways to encourage self and others
Being in the presence of encouraging people is just great. Suddenly you expand into the next iteration of yourself, someone who can do hard things, someone who has untapped capacity and potential. The world you knew shimmers and gets a little less bound.
I used to volunteer to sit in on group reading sessions at the village school my children attended in West Wales, UK. Usually three or four pupils would gather to read aloud in turn from a story book they’d chosen from the school library. A neighbour had shared with me that she never said NO to her son when he was learning new things, she just gently redirected him or encouraged him to try again if he got something wrong.
This pearl of wisdom landed deep for me and I decided to experiment with it in the group reading sessions. The groups I loved the most were the readers who were just getting confident to sound out unfamiliar words. In the beginning there was hesitation and self-consciousness but soon, with a little prompting to break the word down, the young readers got comfortable sounding out these long new words.
Sure enough they would mispronounce part of a word.
[And let’s just say, with the English language having such an astonishing number of ways to pronounce the same group of letters, it’s kind of miraculous a) that the language has survived and spread so widely b) that so many people actually manage to learn it at all. I give you a poem of English language inconsistency:
Through rhymes with too
Rough rhymes with stuff
Bough rhymes with cow
Dough rhymes with go
Cough rhymes with off
Thought rhymes with caught
Thorough - rhymes with ruh
Hiccough - rhymes with cup
Lough (Irish term for lake rhymes with lock)
With thanks to the internet for giving me all the variations.
Back to the young readers. So I would say, ’try again’ or ‘nearly’ or ‘almost’.
Sometimes another reader in the group wanted to jump in with the correct way of saying the word. A gentle redirect there, such as, ‘let’s give Dafydd the chance to read it before we try and help’, soon had everyone giving each other space. The reader would try and try again and usually it would only take two or three attempts and the word would be sounded out correctly.
The real magic?
It was the look of joy and triumph on the child’s face as they read a word they’d never seen before. The more this happened the more eagerly they had a go at sounding out new words. It was a beautiful example of so many things: the sponge like learning capacity of our minds when they are free of negativity, the power of group learning, the power of encouragement. Remembering this has brought me great joy and a reminder that there is a far greater power at play in life than we could ever really imagine.
Try it! Here are some great American phrases for encouraging others next time you are out and about:
I appreciate that/you!
You got this!
Great job!
Nice job!
Right on!
Is it me or do they just feel cleaner and easier to say and hear than the slightly more staid, earnest even, British English equivalents?
Well done
That’s brilliant
Keep at it
Don’t give up
And once again, what about if we turned that encouragement on ourselves? Can you imagine, cheering yourself on in your day to day life? Radical? Revolutionary or about time?
Look for ways to honour, celebrate and respect self and others
As I asked, what would that look like, I heard: LISTEN, GATHER, REST, NURTURE, SEE, ACKNOWLEDGE, EXPRESS, AND SHARE APPRECIATION.
It could be as simple as saying out loud the complimentary thoughts that occur to you. I like those ear rings, you think so why not say, I like your ear rings. He always puts a smile on my face, could be ‘you always put a smile on my face.’ Here on Substack if you read something that inspires you or entertains you, like it or share it with your response to the piece or credit someone’s post, phrase or sentiments that inspire some new piece of creativity in you.
See and celebrate each person’s and being’s gift
How would I do that I wondered?
Listen and ask until you resonate with their song or spirit and then sing together to celebrate the wonders of life. Whatever form the song is. It might be laughter, running, cooking, crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, taking and sharing photos.
And what of rewards for such behaviour?
The best came last. The reward for such behaviour is the behaviour itself. When we cultivate behaviour that brings care back into the human core of human life, we bring joy and appreciation to self and others, effortlessly.
Gratitude
I feel immensely grateful for my family. My youngest daughter and her partner’s time in our house gave me so much inspiration and joy. I saw our place through their eyes. I saw my husband and friends showing up even more deeply as the caring, generous souls they are. I feel very blessed.
My little publication passed the 100 subscriber mark a couple of weeks ago. This is entirely down to recommendations and sharing within Substack and is really fun. Writing this brings me so much joy. It is changing the way I move through the world here: what I notice, what I record. I’ve been posting weekly for just over 7 months and I’m not doing much different than I did at the start, other than posting Notes in between. The Notes are a great way for to share more photos of this beautiful part of the world. I realise I’m not particularly bothered about deep engagement with readers. What I hope the writing delivers is entertainment and inspiration. If it makes someone get up and go outside for a walk or pick up their pen or call a loved one, or discover the meaning of life - then all of the above bring me joy. And mostly I’ll never know. That’s okay too. But when people write and tell me, it’s a beautiful thing and encourages me to continue.
Threads that pull me
On the Commons publication by Antonia Malchik
Author Tom Robbins died recently. I heard my hairdresser mention him six months ago. It turns out he lived in La Conner. I saw one of his novels, Skinny Legs and All the other day in Pelican Book Store. As I read the titles of his other books in the front pages, I realise I’d read most of them, back in my twenties. Time to revisit. So far, my early impressions are of a fast paced zany read. It feels dated in ways. Language and references that had me feeling uncomfortable but also parts that are laugh out loud funny. I’ll continue.
Questions
How would you ‘reward and cultivate behaviour that brings care back to the core of human life,’ at home, in your community, in your word, thought and deed?’
That’s all folks. It’s been a slow birthing of this post this morning, sitting on the sofa, gently bringing it into the world. What a joy! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments and pressing on the little heart always gives me a smile. Restack any Substack posts you enjoy, it helps us all reach new readers. You can add your comment or just restack without a comment.
‘Til next time
Juliet
Such thoughtful and inspiring questions, Juliet. Thank you! Winding back to Lily at Bloom, love that she has a portrait of herself on the wall!! :-)
It's so refreshing and delightful to look at the differences between UK & US through your eyes. ♥️
Even to this day after 7 years, I still look to the right first before I cross the street and I still have my weather app on Celsius and I still can't get used to the top loading washing machine and the vacuum cleaner. 😂
And the English language and the different accents? My daughter is learning phonics and though we try to learn how thoroughly farmer Dan cleans the trough through and through, we can't quite pin down the rules. 😂
Quite an adventure learning the English language with a young child in primarily the American, British, and Scottish accents. 😅