Scrubbing My Space by Daniel Oestreich

I did manage to get the refrigerator cleaned out today, a major accomplishment. The back part was pretty close to being designated a Wilderness Area, as no one had been there in quite a long time and it certainly had developed a life of its own.

I wonder why sometimes it takes so long to ‘scrub my space.’ Of course I certainly can’t say such scrubbing is meaningful compared to other things I do like photograph, write or consult, attend to my children, love my girlfriend. I forgive myself for ‘not doing’ most of the time, confusing myself that because Buddhism condones non-action, I am free of my refrigerator and the untouched science experiments within. I am free, I tell myself, or try to despite my constant, if vague misgivings, like a man trying hard not to see himself in the mirror he constantly passes by.

And I do know, it does feel so very good to get it done. Today, completing my task, I was radiant, telling the neighbors, yeah I did it! as if they cared. And now I’m telling you, too.

It makes me think of that Zen admonition to be present to whatever one is doing: eating, sleeping, tying one’s shoes. Perhaps in these small tasks, some of them very small indeed, exist the real self-confrontations, the wholly boring ones, drama-less, empty, devoid of any particular heroism or attractive trophy, the thankless ones that are just relentless in terms of their low-key nag. In them we find our destined war with our own conditioning, the injunctions of the past and all our rebellions; our war with the myriad voices we know will have to be conquered or set aside someday but for now are still allowed to cluck and judge and preen themselves while we stand helpless, door open, light on, wondering at the mass of odd cartons and half-empty bottles and dishes of leftovers, imagining the drek behind and wondering, “Am I really capable of doing this?” Forever there’s the internal battle with the untamed self. Is today the day I clean out my refrigerator, I ask, or will once again I find sufficient cause to run away into my fantasy life — on redbubble?

Today I held firm to the Zen of discovering those wasted morsels of yesteryear (or yestermonth anyway) trapped in their plastic tombs. I held firm to the Zen of trying not to breathe as they were emptied out into the sink and whisked far away down the disposal.

Is today the day I clean out my refrigerator? Who knows that Zen refrain so well as I? There he stands, Han-Shan, laughing in his cave way back up there in that chilly wilderness called Cold Mountain.