Jo Walton ([info]papersky) wrote,
@ 2004-09-10 07:35:00
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Laundry on the Last Day of Your Life
A while ago, talking about the concept of "live as if it's the last day of your life", (with "you" here and throughout meaning the exemplary "you", not necessarily you in particular,) [info]lisajulie said "If it was the last day of my life, I wouldn't do laundry".

I thought about this, and realized that the problem is living simultaneously as if it's the last day of your life and as if you're going to live forever, which means you need to do laundry, but you should do it the way you would do it if you were the last day of your life.

In the same way, there are entire cities which most people have only heard of because St. Paul wrote letters to them. You therefore need to live as if you're both St. Paul and one of the people living in those cities, because history might equally well entirely forget you or hold your every move up to intense scrutiny.

Some days I do better than others at all of this, but when I do it right I get a very good equilibrium.

(Written down and posted at [info]cheshyre's request.)

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[info]oursin
2004-09-10 05:06 am UTC (link)

There was some medieval saint who, when asked what he would do if he were told that the Day of Judgement was at hand, said 'Say the office, and then tend my rose-garden'.

EM Forster said somewhere (? to C Isherwood) 'live as though you were immortal', which is a rather different thing (and if you didn't do the laundry you'd soon be engulfed in dirty washing).

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[info]rysmiel
2004-09-10 07:42 am UTC (link)
I've heard that as an Ignatious Loyola story, fwiw.

He's also the official patron saint of IT, on the grounds of having invented the index. Myself I would have picked one of the saints who sat on top of pole for decades not talking to anyone and getting increasingly grubbier, at least if sysadminning is to get a patron saint.

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[info]oursin
2004-09-10 08:20 am UTC (link)
I thought Loyola was the one who said, that if the Pope decided to terminate the Jesuit order, 'an hour in meditation and it would be no matter'?

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[info]rysmiel
2004-09-10 01:20 pm UTC (link)
He may well have; I'm remembering the story from secondary school history classes at a distance of eighteen years, and not at all pretending to be authoritative. And it was a Catholic secondary school that might not have been above nicking the good lines.

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[info]copperwise
2004-09-10 10:21 am UTC (link)
LOL! Yes, that would be the ideal IT saint.

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[info]sciamanna
2004-09-10 05:22 am UTC (link)
Yes, that has always been my problem with the advice "live as if it's the last day of your life". Or, in the Stephen Batchelor version, live as if you had but one year to live -- a bit better, some laundry gets done, but still not good enough.

Thanks for expressing the dilemma better than I could have done.

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[info]cakmpls
2004-09-10 05:22 am UTC (link)
Some of us (say, me) have a better chance than others (say, you) of being entirely forgotten by history. In an ideal world, that wouldn't affect the way either of us lives life (a state perhaps much like your "very good equilibrium"); in my case, at least, in the real world, I fear that it does.

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[info]papersky
2004-09-10 06:35 am UTC (link)
Ever heard of George Lancing? He wrote and published at least six novels from a major British publisher in the 1930s, and as far as I can tell he's utterly forgotten.

And you never know what you might do, or might have done already, that future ages will decide to value above rubies.

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george lancing
(Anonymous)
2006-02-10 08:48 pm UTC (link)
George Lancing was the peudonym of my grandmother Bluebell Hunter. The only novels of hers I can remember ar Fraudulent Conversion, Infamous Conduct and Kensington Village. She also wrote novels about China in the time of the Imperial dynasty.
Joanna Howard

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[info]papersky
2004-09-11 05:09 am UTC (link)
Furthermore -- I was thinking about this -- you have no way of knowing your daughter or her daughter won't invent FTL, and therefore your life become of historical importance for that reason. Maybe someone could write a stunning biography of you that interprets the whole period of your life in terms of you as mother or grandmother of FTL inventer which will be read in schools all over the universe.

You can't know.

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[info]lisajulie
2004-09-11 03:13 pm UTC (link)
Wow! This has set me furiously to thinking. (cue the smell of burning bearing grease).

I had never even considered that being remembered by history as being a salient point on how I lead my life. Maybe I expect to be forgotten - one of the silent, unspeaking presences of the past.

You, on the other hand, have put your stamp on the future. You have raised and are raising children. The courage that you show in investing in the future is honestly, awesome. There is no promise of reward or payback at all - you simply flung yourself and your energy and your life into the project.

Thank you for your contribution to our (generic) future.

I owe you.

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[info]purpletigron
2004-09-10 05:37 am UTC (link)
I've heard it as, "Live as if it is the last day of your life, but farm as though you are going to live forever" ... quite so.

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[info]adrian_turtle
2004-09-12 01:04 pm UTC (link)
I think this is the best part of Nevil Shute's _On The Beach_. I don't know if anyone puts it in those words, exactly. But everybody is carrying on with less than a year to live, and there are some lovely bits about, "Well, of course he does know we won't be here next spring. But it would be bad farming not to do it, and he's always been a good farmer."

(I think this is Shute's most famous book, but it's nowhere near my favorite. I much prefer _Trustee from the Toolroom_ and _Legacy_)

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[info]papersky
2004-09-12 03:51 pm UTC (link)
It's far from my favourite -- in fact, one of my least favourites, but I agree that's lovely in it. There's a bit about planting daffodils for a Spring they'll never see.

My favourite Shute is -- no, there are too many. Among my favourite Shutes are Round the Bend, A Town Like Alice, and Requiem for a Wren. And, and, and... I really really like Shute, though as he's a comfort read I tend to wear out a few and need to leave them fallow.

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[info]adrian_turtle
2004-09-12 08:28 pm UTC (link)
I think A Town Like Alice was the Commonwealth title for the book I read as The Legacy. It's about Jean Paget? She inherits money and goes off to Malaya, to dig a well in the place where she was imprisoned during WWII? (Not that it's about that, really. That's just sort of the frame.) It's irritating that so many of Shute's books were published with different titles. I thought I'd never heard of Requiem for a Wren, but I looked it up just now and realized the US title was The Breaking Wave. Not my favorite, and not something I'd consider a comfort read, but still good.

When I was visiting my mother last weekend, I laid hands on some old books I hadn't read for at least 20 years. One of them was So Disdained. (Possible alternate title, The Mysterious Aviator. It's about Maurice Lenden and Peter Moran, set in the 1920s in Sussex.) As a paired reading with The Lost Steersman, it was amazing. I'm still too stunned to write it up, and it's been more than a week.

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[info]bohemiancoast
2004-09-10 05:48 am UTC (link)
I've been thinking about death a lot recently. Or rather, I've been thinking about life. Or something. Philosophy, anyway. I read Seneca's essay 'On the Shortness of Life' a couple of weeks ago, and found that the key message I took from it is that I don't want to live my life as if it was always the last day. Instead, I want to be prepared for death; not in the sense that I would want to drop dead tomorrow, but in the sense that I wouldn't feel that I'd wasted the life that I'd had, or left things more than necessarily incomplete. And doing the laundry is definitely a part of that.

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[info]cheshyre
2004-09-10 05:50 am UTC (link)
Thanks.

You're a good man, Charlie Brown includes this exchange:
[SALLY] You know, someone had said that we should live every day as if it were the last day of our life.

[LUCY (passing by and overhearing)] Aaugh! This is the last day!! This is it!! I only have twenty-four hours left!! Help me! Help me! This is the last day!! Aaugh!

[SALLY] Clearly, some philosophies aren't for all people.

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[info]_swallow
2004-09-10 06:03 am UTC (link)
> In the same way, there are entire cities which most people have only heard of because St. Paul wrote letters to them. You therefore need to live as if you're both St. Paul and one of the people living in those cities, because history might equally well entirely forget you or hold your every move up to intense scrutiny.

You are so cool.

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[info]fairmer
2004-09-10 06:22 am UTC (link)
I think I'd really like to have a clean shirt on my last day, so I suspect there's some merit to doing your laundry.

It's when it turns into doing other people's laundry that things get less fun.

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[info]papersky
2004-09-10 06:41 am UTC (link)
I do everyone's laundry -- but then I get to hang it out on the line in an aesthetically pleasing pattern, which is better than if it's just mine, because mine are all blue.

And I have a washing machine that does the hard parts for me, which after many years of lugging everything to a launderette or doing it by hand makes it all very easy.

Also, although I do all the cooking and all the laundry I don't do any cleaning, because that's [info]zorinth and [info]rysmiel's part of the homework3, and it's picking up and cleaning I really find tedious.

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[info]fairmer
2004-09-10 07:09 am UTC (link)
Mmm, linedrying. I miss that. It's rather looked down on where we live right now, and may even be against the homeowner's association by-laws, not that those are legally enforcable... But everything smells so nice when dried outside.

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[info]snippy
2004-09-10 07:45 am UTC (link)
My husband does all the laundry. But I do love to iron.

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[info]wilfulcait
2004-09-10 06:56 am UTC (link)
For years I lived with a man who had a physical condition that could have made him drop dead at any point. He could walk out the door in the morning in good spirits feeling fine, and be in the ICU by noon. We used to say that we had to live as though we had forever, and as though we had no time. That means always saying goodbye in a loving way, but also making plans with a ten-year horizon. When you get that right, it's very freeing; when you get it wrong, it plays bad games with your brain.

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[info]barbarakitten_t
2004-09-10 07:13 am UTC (link)
elsewhere, a friend of mine was talking about ripples and concentric circles. everything one does affects hi/rself and the environment around h/ir. if you remember that and live accordingly, going "placidly amid the noise and haste and remembering what peace there may be in silence" (if you will pardon the cliche) things will be all right.

ack...my peace is being disturbed and i have to help someone at the desk...

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[info]lisajulie
2004-09-10 07:46 am UTC (link)
Just to set the record straight, I _do_ laundry. On a regular basis even!

But you expressed well the tension between living as if you're going to live forever (so you have to do laundry) and as if this is the last day of your life (don't put off doing something you want to do for some distant future time).

Looked at with a detached viewpoint, I think I tend towards the "live forever" side of things a little more than is ideal, but not so much that if I were to die tomorrow, I'd have a huge lump of things I'd regret not having done.

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[info]thomasyan
2004-09-10 08:24 am UTC (link)
the problem is living simultaneously as if it's the last day of your life and as if you're going to live forever

As long as it's not like Groundhog Day, and I have to relive the same, last day over and over, forever. Unless it is one bitching day, but I think even that would pall stretched into infinity.

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[info]copperwise
2004-09-10 10:23 am UTC (link)
This is lovely, and a very nice summary of how I try to look at things. Not always successfully, but I do try.

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[info]goljerp
2004-09-10 12:14 pm UTC (link)
"You are not obliged to finish the task, neither are you free to neglect it." (Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot 2:21)

Ok, I'm going to go do my laundry now. :-)

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[info]livredor
2004-09-12 03:42 pm UTC (link)
I saw this post very shortly before going away for couple of and made a mental note to comment with this tag once I got back and had time to check I had the reference correct. And I come back and I see you've had exactly the same thought. I don't know if I should be pleased or annoyed. But yeah, I second that comment completely!

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[info]goljerp
2004-09-12 09:48 pm UTC (link)
Be pleased: I saved you the work of having to check the reference!

Hmm... It may be because it's really late at night, but you could turn Hillel's famous saying into something about laundry:

If I do not do my own laundry, who will do it for me?
If I only do my own laundry, what am I?
And if not now, when?


(Apologies to Rabbi Hillel, Pirke Avot 1:14)

Hmm... I wonder if I could turn any thing in Pirke Avot into a wise saying about laundry... choosing at random: Pirke Avot 4:11
Rabbi Yonaton taught: whomever does his laundry when he is poor will do his laundry, even when he some day becomes rich; but whomever neglects to do laundry when he is rich will neglect to do it when some day he becomes poor.

I'm going to have to file this for possible purim sillyness...

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Good to meet you
[info]ksp24
2004-09-10 12:18 pm UTC (link)
at the Worldcon.

We chatted about publishing after the massage and story telling interval at the Seattle party . . . and also I met you via Elise and Mike at her booth, I believe.

I hope I'll see you again at another con!

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