Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, tells the following story:

  Washing the dishes to wash the dishes

     Thirty years ago, when I was still a novice at Tu Hieu Pagoda, washing the dishes was hardly a pleasant task. During the Season of Retreat when all the monks returned to the monastery, two novices had to do all the cooking and wash the dishes for sometimes well over one hundred monks.  There as no soap. We had only ashes, rice husks, and coconut husks, and that was all.   Cleaning such a high stack of bowl was a chore, especially during the winter when the water was freezing cold.  Then you had to heat up a big pot of water before you could do any scrubbing.  Nowadays one stands in a kitchen equipped with liquid soap, special scrubpads, and even running hot water which makes it all the more agreeable now.  Anyone can wash them in a hurry, then sit down and enjoy a cup of tea afterwards.  I can see a machine for washing clothes, although I wash my own things out by hand, but a dishwashing machine is going just a little too far!

     While washing the dishes one should only be washing dishes, which mean that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes.  At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing?  But that’s precisely the point.  The fact that I am standing there and washing these bows is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions.  There is no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.  

     If while washing the dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not ‘washing the dishes to wash the dishes.”  What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.  In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink.  If we can’t wash the dishes, the changes are we won’t be able to drink our tea either.  While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands.  Thus we are sucked away into the future – and we are incapable of actually living in a minute of life.

I tell this story to my clients who are anxious, to those with panic disorders, to those who are angry, to those who are depressed and to anyone lost in some other time, away from the present moment.   In fact I might easily say that many of the problems that rob people of happiness in their lives a relationships are in part problems that arise from being stuck in time, away from the miracle of life in the moment.   With panic or just everyday anxiety we leave the present and travel to the future – where it is scary and possibly unsafe or dangerous.  The problem is, our minds are in a scary place in the next half hour or next day or next week, while our bodies are back in the present helpless to make a difference.  

     I told this story to a young mother who came to see me because she was experiencing classical panic symptoms of shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, feelings of being overwhelmed and out of control.  As always, she had a story to tell about her mother recently moving to California leaving her without the emotional and child care support she had enjoyed the first year of her young daughter’s life.   Feeling more alone in the world, she had a panic attack “out of nowhere” while driving down the Interstate one day.  She sought out her physician for an anti-depressant and began taking Prozac and Zanax just before coming to see me.   Despite the presence of these powerful drugs, she still felt vulnerable to panic attacks while driving from time to time.  

Nothing is ever as simple as it might seem in family systems.  She also tried mightily to please those around her and found herself triangled between her brother and her father in occasional family conflicts.  She also got frustrated with her husband for not helping her out more around the house with cleaning and childcare.  She wanted him to show her more empathy, which was hard for him to do as he was feeling burned out from his job and wanted to change careers.   She got out of the triangle, her husband started pitching in more and listening more attentively to her and she talked about missing her mother.  These all helped.  But what seemed to help her in times of near panic was to repeat the phrase:  “I’m just driving the car. I’m just driving the car.”   When she would say that and center herself in the moment, the panic would subside and she would begin to feel in control of her life again.  She agreed that her ‘mental powers’ had gotten stronger and had really helped her away from the panic.  She  thought she had gotten stronger and a lot less needy.