Dear Paul, Learn To Do Laundry and Sew a Button

Dear No Control,

Laundry. Learn to do your own laundry. Not only that, but find the pride and the feeling of accomplishment in doing your laundry, sorting, using the proper detergent, and the suitable bleach on the right things. Drying, fluffing and folding, You know what, throw ironing in there as well. Sure, why not. Learn to iron. Learn to sew on a button, learn to mend a rip. When we are young, we look to our mothers to do all this, but why not look to our fathers or ourselves?

Imagine a time when you’re down on your luck, and you’re in a one-room apartment with enough money for rent, food, a low-class bottle of bourbon, and you have a shirt from which a button drops off when you pull it off the hanger. Well, I tell you this, a slow-motion dropping button bouncing off a perpetually filthy floor can cause the mind to think, fuck this life. Why do I even bother? I am done for; I am struck down, I am forgotten, I am unseen, I am nothing. And then, that money for rent goes to buy better bottles of bourbon, and then the money for food goes to buy more bottles of bourbon. And then, you truly are done, down, defeated, unseen, a faceless name stalking the streets until you die. Or, you get redeemed, but that’s another answer to a different question.

It’s just a button; you’re saying, how can it have that kind of power? Believe me, it does. A button, a rip, a broken “favorite” coffee cup. It’s not the monumental things that cause us to break down. Those things are so huge and present that we see them as quests, tests, and things to give our best, then triumph glorious and new. But, when the shit starts as a mite of dust in a corner but suddenly one thing piles on the next thing, and you no longer see the light through the windows because you cannot see the windows, it’s the little thing, the small thing, the last straw that will send you in a spiral over the edge. And that small thing, that lost ring, that button, that paper cut … that makes you a person who doesn’t even care they are now over the edge. You just accept it, of course; this happens to me, everything happens to me, I am worthless, I deserve to be a maker of misery to myself and others, I am NOTHING. The little things that play upon your weakness rattle your brain stop you short, and send you in that other direction. Think about it.

Now, think on this; When you’re in that one-room apartment with enough money for rent, food, and a low-class bottle of bourbon. When your luck is low, and a button falls from a shirt you pull from the hanger; if you have learned how to sew that button on, it no longer has the power to be that little thing. You take your portable sewing kit from a drawer, sit, thread a needle, and return the button to its place, its purpose, with your own hands. Well, suddenly, you have control over something. Over one thing in this spiraling, out of control, why me, world. One thing you can do. One useful thing. That leads to something else and something else. Then, you find yourself in a two-room apartment on the top floor with lots of light and more space. It ain’t Shangri-fuckin’-la; I mean, it was, after all, only a button. But it’s a start. And there are days when a start is what you need.

Oh, now we could be philosophical. We could be spiritual. Learn to love your fellow man. Or learn the value of yourself. Learn the value of forgiveness. Learn French. Sure, those are good thoughts, good ideas, high minded yumminess. But, when you have been broken by the most minor thing, it’s hard to see forgiveness and love for your fellow man. It’s hard to value yourself. It’s hard to imagine how the fuck knowing French is going to help you. When it’s the smallest thing, it is all you see. All of your life, all of your failures, losses, dashed dreams, wishes, wants, and needs are focused on that one button as it drops to the floor. All you can see is this last straw. Mend the button, and the rest is possible.

Learn to do laundry, iron a shirt, and mend a button. Take pride in it, find the joy in its simplicity, and then … go from there.