On what a few hundred carrots can teach you

“Wash the dishes to wash the dishes.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

I volunteered this week. Once chopping carrots at DC Central Kitchen; once playing with cats at the SPCA. Both brought me into the present moment and provided emotional connection to self, others, community, purpose. Both surfaced appreciation for current state, even in its highs and lows.

There's a meditative aspect to chopping a carrot or petting a cat. You find a rhythm. You pay attention to the response. You iterate as need be.

Take the few hundred carrots I peeled and chopped. At first, I grabbed a carrot, peeled it, sliced it, dumped the cut pieces in the food bin, swiped the peeled parts into compost. Rinse, repeat.

Then I realized—this isn't super efficient. So I grabbed a few carrots, peeling all of them, then slicing all of them, then dumping all the cut pieces, then swiping all the peeled parts.

Then I realized—this isn't as satisfying, though. So I iterated again. I grabbed a few carrots, peeled all of them, then sliced them one at a time, dumping the respective cut pieces, continuing until the last one, then swiping all the peeled parts.

This added moments of celebration along the way that the first iteration didn't provide.

Patanjali tells us in Sutra 1.14 that practice becomes firmly grounded when attended to for a long time, without break, with earnestness. The carrots were a practice. So was iterating on how I peeled them. The earnestness is the part we forget—it's not just repetition, it's repetition with care, with attention to whether the rhythm is actually serving us.

This is life. There are carrots that we peel and peeled parts that we compost and moments in-between which we can enjoy more than we do. It's on us to find a rhythm to life that works for us—that's efficient and functional as well as joyous and satisfying.

Wash the dishes to wash the dishes. Peel the carrot to peel the carrot. Pet the cat to pet the cat (and because they’re super cute and deserving). And notice, along the way, what kind of rhythm you're keeping.