My Dishes

Lately I have not been able to muster up the drive to wash dirty dishes. Possibly it is due to this idea that slithers around in the back of my mind: what is the point?

You can try to clean dishes so well. Soak, scour, rinse, dry, polish, everything it takes to make them ready for the next meal even though afterward your hands are chapped, cracked and bleeding. Then comes the inherent problem. The next meal just makes the dishes dirty again.

If you don't wash the dishes they pile up. Some bits harden and cling to the dishes, solid and almost a part of the dish. Sometimes the dishes become stained from use, besmirched by a powerful and thick hue in the meal. As they stay there, untouched, unwashed, bacteria cultures, organic elements decay and rot, creating a foul odor about your dishes.

What is the alternative? Disposable plates? But then your old dishes still stay dirty and what you have now is not really yours. It does not require responsibility and ownership for one's dishes. Out of the package, used for a single meal, then thrown away.

Maybe we need someone to wash our dishes for us if we cannot do it ourselves. Someone who does not mind cleaning up after the last snack, meal or feast. This would be ideal if we could find that person and actually allow them to wash our dishes. But ultimately it would be an unfulfillable and one sided arrangement. All giving on one side, consuming and discarding, with only receiving on the other, endlessly cleaning up another person's mess.

I think the answer is to look for someone who's dishes you would not mind cleaning, in exchange for them washing yours. Though my dishes are now still sitting in the sink, untouched by me, I can only hope that one day they will be clean again.

::GringO::