I was doing laundry one night, pulling the newly cleaned clothes out of the top load washer and throwing them into the dryer in that rhythmic way that you get into after years of this motion. I had been in a hurry which made me mix some items to wash that normally I wouldn't have done. In the eclectic mix had been shirts, jeans, panty hose... you can see the mess that would lay ahead. Blissfully, I ignored the impending headache, dug my hand in and expected no problems. Funny thing is, even as my hand pulled up the huge wad of a clothes knot, I still pulled; and shook; and pulled more; and cursed; and even got mad that it was there. Hey, it was a long day. I just.... wanted.... to... be... done with the laundry (tug, tug, tug). Then I dropped the load into the washer. I paused. Looked at it for a minute and took a deep breath. Interesting. As soon as I let go of it, the tight knot that I had made, had loosened. OK. "Let's see what we have here", I thought. Within moments, I narrowed down the first culprit: panty hose. It had made its way around just about everything. Instead of using my whole hand to reef on the mess, this time I relied on my fingers; I loosened up one area, unwove a different area; finally got one leg of the panty hose free, then used that to navigate my way through the second leg's knot. Before long, one major portion of the knot was no longer. Then I reached in for the second round. Did I mention I also put in my jeggings? My fingers manoeuvred those out next. Piece of clothing by piece of clothing, I undid the big knot.
In that instant, the word "stress" came into my head. Hmmm. That huge mess of a knot of laundry was just like the stress I was carrying around. We just finished moving into a house we built, as the "husband and wife general contractor" duo (that's an entirely different story for an entirely different time, thank you Winnie the Pooh). That huge, mess of stress was right there in front of me, as I tug, tug, tugged at it. "Put your stress down", I thought. What does pressing and blindly pulling at stress do? Makes it worse. Set the stress down and watch what happens. It loosens slightly. Doesn't go away, but doesn't get worse by added actions. When stress can be taken off our shoulders for a moment, we can have a chance to look at it; the whole ugly mess of it. It's not until we can see from a big picture just how tangled, how "complicated" the stress is, that we can digest it. And it can only be unravelled gently; with a focus on just one item at a time. Just one. The rest of the mess is still there; and will still continue to be there; it can wait it's turn.
So the next time a pile of stress is on my shoulders, I hope to be able to pause for a moment, and simply set it down. Set it down so that it may loosen and that my level head may begin to unravel its content and its meaning. Only then will I be able to sort through it.
Who thought a load of laundry could be so interesting :)
