From prompt: Small things that add up to a life

I used to resent washing the dishes. It only takes ten minutes but I resented every second. I had better things to do with my precious energy. One day I noticed my hands in the bubbles, washing a plate. Suddenly the image of a woman washing her dishes in a plastic bucket by a river in a hot, beautiful country. Then someone filling a dishwasher in America. Someone else in a rudimentary kitchen in a favela washing her dishes in a sink, like me. I saw a silver thread joining me to them at the heart. Then travelling out to connect to how many millions of us washing dishes at that moment in a hundred different countries around the globe. Another world wide web. I felt the web vibrate. Millions of us engaged in a mundane chore, together, apart. Bound by the everyday, the ordinary. Bonded by ritual. I belong to the human race, a strand in the great web. Washing dishes has new meaning for me.

© 2022 Una Hearne

Pic credit: Rewrite 27. Found on pixabay