“Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”*
After supper one early evening, when I was a high school student, my dad made an unusual offer to do the dishes. Standing at the kitchen sink with a counter of perfectly organized dishes to his left, and smiling as he turned to speak to my mother and me (his audience), he had announced, “All it takes is organization.” (This is the only time I remember him doing the dishes.) The job consisted simply of rinsing and putting dishes and utensils into the dishwasher and hand washing the pots and pans. However, standing at the sink, looking out the window—even if this was not his thought at that moment—what was visible were examples of his success at applying imaginative organization in his life: the sloping backyard of grassy lawn weeded free of dandelions, the regularly mowed grass in a diagonal pattern where for years there had been a large vegetable garden and asparagus bed, and a row of peonies that still remained as a reminder of the long, old-fashioned-flower border established in front of a gray, wooden fence he built to separate hollyhocks from cucumbers growing side by side.
His degree was in mechanical engineering. His books were neatly shelved in the third floor livable attic space used for storage, but they seemed more a confirmation of a young man of the depression who’d improved his life rather than references for his work as I don’t recall ever seeing him open one. His life’s work had been in production, where his imaginative powers coupled with his organizational skills had been a strong ability. It was evident also at home where his enjoyment came from using his hands—he was always at work on our home and in our yard. His view of life resembled that of the imaginative Albert Einstein with his thoughtful relationship with all of life’s aspects in which imagination reigned.
By contrast, my mother, a talented woman with a strong Leo personality, and the one who kept up the kitchen, accomplished her housework simply, usually leaving a lingering aroma of a homemade dessert in the kitchen. I see her as not having to think about how to live—but simply knowing.
Having both to observe, my way evolved more like my dad’s—a thinking relationship with the things and connections in my life. A few years ago, one early night, I had felt particularly physically and mentally tired as I faced the unwashed dishes jumbled on my counter. In this state of non-functioning, I had paused, and in those few moments I heard my dad’s voice speaking to me (by spirit communication) across the decades, “All you have to do is organize.” I did that night—and have done so ever since.
My realization is, “We move more easily through stages in life by being able to withdraw remembered words of help from situations that at the time had seemed unimportant.”
* quotationsbook.com/quote/20416/ Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879–April 18, 1955) was a German-American theoretical physicist who many regard as the greatest scientist of the 20th century.