In Hot Water

I was sitting on the floor of my shower. Hot water running down my back, knees curled up, face buried in them.
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For the 100th time I wondered how I had gotten into this mess. The tears streaming down my face were indistinguishable from the water dripping from my hair…I was just so damn tired and then…

This memory could have been attributed to at least a dozen points in my life. Moments when I felt lost, despair, frustrated, confused, angry…all the normal human emotions we don’t like to talk about. But they exist. Oh fuck how they exist. Even among the happiest of us, some days feel like a lot.

But this particular moment, I remember thinking the depths of emotion were just too much. (Imagine yourself a dramatic back of the hand to the forehead moment here…with a ginormous sigh for good measure.) I was beyond exhausted. And I spoke these words aloud:

“One thing. I want one thing to be happy about dammit!”

At that moment, that pivotal life changing moment, a blink happened in the universe. On the surface nothing had changed. But when the universe hiccups, it sends a sign clear as day. This sign came in the form of …

COLD
FUCKING
WATER

For an instant. The briefest of instants. The tiniest of flicks. But in my heightened state it was enough to send me scooting backwards on my naked bottom out of the water’s spray, sliding on the soapy surface and cursing like a sailor who discovered he has clap from his shore leave.

“Are you kidding me?” 

Now I was alone and no longer crying. Screaming at the water coming full blast out of the shower head which seemed to loom and tower above me…

Yet it had already returned to its blissful heated state. Whatever mechanical failure had caused the minuscule droplets of ice water to flow from the tap, had already rectified itself. And as I stared up realizing that I was yelling at something that was now working perfectly fine, it hit me.

Hot water.
Hot water was something to be happy about.

Still naked. Still sitting on the floor of my shower, but now back under the steamy spray, it was like a window to modern day miracles opened up in my head.

Hot water.
Ice instantaneously from the fridge.
A soft mattress.
Clothes in the closet.
A car that ran.
Cars in general.
Planes that actually fly…

It was like I couldn’t turn off the racing thoughts.
How long had it been since I noticed the extraordinary ordinary things that made my life so easy?

• Hungry? I don’t grow my food. I buy it. Grocery stores, snack shops, restaurants, all there to feed me.
• Hot? Cold? I don’t sew (although I’d like to learn) and yet my closet is stuffed with clothes - much more than I need for basic survival for sure.
• Miss my friends? They are just a text (wowzer explain a text to the likes of Benjamin Franklin why don’t you) a call or a trip away.

I suddenly had no idea why I never noticed how EASY life was, how MUCH I already had, how RICH and FULL my experience was with very little effort or innovation on my part.

It’s funny. I’m not religious, but I know a lot of the traditional stories about water turning into wine, and bread and fish from a single basket to feed a crowd. I’ve heard the myths behind the promise of the rainbow, and read about those who supposedly rose from the dead. And always when I hear these tales, people seem to imply that miracles were from the “good old days”. Which makes me wonder if anyone has looked around and observed how many miracles we have now?
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• Hot water being one.
• Air conditioning and heating of homes.
• Defibrillators to shock the heart back to the land of the living.
• Clean water to drink.
• Access to more knowledge thru libraries, our phones, a million apps and devices - more than we could learn in several lifetimes.

I stood up and turned off the water. Dried off. Got dressed. And walked into a world more miraculous than I could have ever imagined.

What was I crying about anyway?
Life was amazing. 

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PS - Writing this piece was such a wonderfully eye opening experience. It had been a while since I had paused and marveled at all the creature comforts which bring joy, peace, luxury, ease, and more, to my life. What are extraordinary ordinary things that you appreciate? I would love to hear...

xoxo,
​Tink

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