Slides and Dishes

I returned from a meditation retreat last Sunday, and spent the last week at work. My team has an upcoming update to a senior manager, hence the team was rushing to get out a slide deck for the update meeting.

At the end of Friday, as I was leaving the office, I got a message from a colleague saying “Hope slide making went well!”

And I confessed something that I’ve rarely confessed: actually, I really hate slide making… in general, I really dislike making slides.

But over time, I’ve learned to let go of that strong feeling, in the same way that I learned to let go of my aversion towards doing dishes.

My aversion towards dishes has a very specific memory attached to it. I think I was around 11 years old or so, and was taking a nap in the afternoon, when my sister suddenly woke me up.

Sis: Hey, you didn’t wash up after your lunch. Me: *groggily* …. I will do that later. Sis: Ma is washing for you. Do it now.

I was still waking up and processing what she said, when I felt her hand pulling at my t-shirt. OMFG, she was dragging me out of bed!!

Me: OK OK!! I AM GETTING UP!!!

And under my sister’s fierce glare, I dragged myself downstairs, where my mum was.

Mum: I already said it is fine for me to wash the dishes! Sis: NO! He needs to learn to be responsible for his own messes. Don’t you dare wash up for him. (With the passage of time, I am very grateful to my sister for this, as this helped prevent me from becoming a spoiled brat.)

And she stood there while I finished washing up my dishes. (I’ve always said my sister would make a great sergeant major in the Army. Case in point.)

And since that time, I have always felt very strongly against doing dishes.

But the strange thing is, the more I hated it, the more I got to do it. (Maybe it was just my mind noticing the moments when I actually had to do it.)

And over time, I came to realise that, as my teacher Ajahn Brahm often says, doing it is easy; thinking about it is the hard part. The task itself was really not half as bad as the negativity, feelings of dark premonition (“oh no! I have to do the dishes…”), the mental complaining, the thinking of ways to get out of it, etc.

Sometimes, the task of dishwashing is actually really nice: like when you’re cleaning up after a great meal, and the cooks hate washing up even more than you do… it feels nice to give back. Or when there is plenty of warm water, so the task is done in warm (rather than freezing cold) water. Or when there are other friends to do the task with, and you end up joking or pranking each other as you complete the task.

Hence, while I wouldn’t say I love doing dishes, nowadays, I am much more indifferent, and it feels great to be free from that hellish feeling of dread that used to fill my mind.

Likewise, with slides, nowadays I take a much more indifferent view towards slides than before, and sometimes even try and play around using the slides as a creative medium of-sorts.

But more often than not, it’s just a task where doing it is easy, whereas thinking about it is much harder (and a lot more suffering).

Written on 20 Oct 25 6:02pm.