Gnats

There's nothing like the practical to cure moodiness.

Everyone has those days when their nasty internal critics catch up with them, chanting poisonous little lies and half-truths.  It's a dirty collection of "always" and "nevers", buzzing like gnats at your ears.  Not pretty enough.  Too lazy.  Not smart enough.  Too loud.  Coward.  Hypocrite.  No one really likes you.  You'll never be good enough.  Like bugs on hot days, there's always at least one or two to swat away, but when they come in swarms it can be paralyzing.

During a two-hour afternoon nap last week I was surrounded by a cloud of them, the annoying buzz rising to piercing shrieks.  The dense darkness pressed down as I laid on the couch and watched the clock tick, becoming slowly more convinced that three hundred orphans and a baby kitten would die horrible deaths if I continued to be so incompetent.  And if I can't get anything right, if I can't even keep my own kitchen clean, why bother at all with anything? I sunk deeper into the maroon couch cushions beneath the crescendo.

Then Rationality came charging from the back with a fly swatter, bellowing above the noise that it was all nonsense.  Doing nothing is far worse than getting a few things wrong while trying to get it right.  And what does a sink full of 5-day-old dirty dishes have to do with the orphans?  Get up.  Get UP.

So I went to the kitchen and filled the sink with water, the oppressive cloud stalking my movements, still thick and violent.  But with each glass I scrubbed clear and each pot I scoured clean, the screech of the gnats would fade and the cloud thin.  The irrational introspection was being replaced by the pleasure of work, of usefulness.  A cacophony of "never do" was confronted with the evidence of "just did" by the filled dish rack.

I ended the day with both a cleaner kitchen and a cleaner mind.