Cleanse to be happy

Sometimes all you need for happiness is to cleanse your mind and body, wait for tomorrow, wake up and become a clean slate again. Forget fear, pain, and hurt. Function like a newborn. Be happy with yourself, with others, with the weather and the neighbors. If it was that easy. If only it could be done with a rough sponge, with some soap and a large basin - to drain all the dirt from years and years of collecting it. It ain't. There is no magic sponge that gets under your skin, into your brain and in between your thoughts. There is only you and then you again. And more you. Double you, triple you. What do we do instead of cleansing? We block it. We invent a perfume, much like the French who didn't want to stink in the presence of the King. We douse our stuffed heads and corseted bodies with gallons of rose water, we put on pink glasses, and we waltz into the day, each morning, until one day we forget we doused ourselves with this smell, and we think that we really DO smell like roses. Guess what happens if someone pokes you - you stink. What do you do then? You poke back. Or you cower and run away. Then you cover it up, that spot, to stop the odor - with more rose water. To pretend again that you're happy, the next day, the next year, the next decade.

We build a crust of prettiness. We start loving that image, and others know us for that as well. We finally feel content with ourselves and the world, until we have so much plaster on our faces, that it cracks, and a big chunk falls off. The real you, the stinky smelly dirty you is suddenly visible to everyone around. Guess what happens then. Terrified that someone else might think we are all stinky under our layers, we start throwing rotten tomatoes at the poor gal, or lad. We laugh and we think inside, ha! I am glad it's not me. My facade will never crumble. I will strengthen it and patch it and do all I can to maintain it, for all my friends and family to admire. And we do that. We put another layer, and then another, and even more. Pretty soon we can hardly walk, there is so much weight stuck to our skin. So we move about slower, we become very careful, we don't go dancing or mingling for fear of breaking our protective shell. Until one day we can't move at all, so we let others move us around, if we're lucky and there is someone willing to do that. Usually what happens is a jolt of some kind, something that lets us forget for a second about all that protection. Perhaps we fall in love, or someone dies in our family, or we get diagnosed with a terminal disease. In that moment, we jerk. We throw our arms up in despair, or we run to the person we love who is dying, or we fall onto our knees in front of our love. Guess what happens next. Our plaster cracks and falls off, not just a big chunk, but many pieces, all over our body and head. And when they fall off, pain sears through our skin because the plaster almost grew into us, we carried it for so long. We desperately try to collect the falling pieces, to stick it all back together, but it's too late. Almost all of it is gone, and we stink. We smell ourselves for the first time, and we realize it is time for a bath, for a big foamy scrub. Surprisingly, even then not all people choose to wash. Some choose to pretend they didn't smell anything at all, and find a way to repair their layer, to move on with life. The problem is, though, they now have remembered how come they doused themselves with rose water in the first place. Now it is harder to forget.

The question I have is, why do we have to wait for something to trigger us into the cleansing? Why do some people choose to do it, and some don't? What's wrong with being a blank slate again? Maybe it's because we got so used to our fragrant protection that we can't bear to look at ourselves naked, raw, vulnerable. Maybe it's because we are so afraid of the unknown that we choose to stay with what we are used to, even if it stinks. And no matter how promising the cleanliness might be, we don't trust it. We try to extend our noses to smell it, and we don't smell anything. We forgot that there is a state like that, and our senses don't pick up the beauty of nothingness. They are dulled. The sad part is, we don't even know that they did got dull a while ago. We are not aware of it anymore. We miss it, and we walk on - broken, patched up dolls. Until someone grabs us by our hand and forces us to look, to smell, to experience. Like a proper grandmother who puts her squirming grandchild into a large tub and scrubs off all dirt until she's pink and shiny. 

I scrub myself now, and each time I do it, another layer falls of, then another, and each time it stinks less and less. Until one day I'll be a blank slate again. Happy.

Photo by Krikit.