there is a principle mormons are fond of espousing, that principle being that when you are focused on yourself and your own problems, you should serve someone else. and that by the act of coming outside of yourself, your own problems seems less serious or, at the best, somehow work themselves out. i have always been skeptical of this principle, mainly because i think sometimes the solution to our problems really is for other people to serve us when we need it, but i decided to put it to the test on friday.
and now, for some back story. every saturday AWD and i have "cleaning day," wherein we clean our house. vacuum, mop, clean the bathroom, do laundry. you know, cleaning day. AWD hates cleaning day. and he especially hates it when we have to do some or all of our cleaning on friday night because there won't be any time to do it on saturday. this weekend threatened to be a friday night cleaning day weekend, and he had already been lamenting that fact.
it was perfect really. i left work a few minutes early, stopped at the grocery and did all our shopping (something else AWD doesn't really like) and then went home and cleaned the whole house before he got home from work. and it felt so good! partly because i have found that an aggressive session of vacuuming or scrubbing gunk out of the caulk in the shower can be a cathartic release of rage and bad feelings. but mostly because AWD was so, so happy when he came home. doing that for him made me feel better than i had in days.
plus, the house was clean. which also makes me really happy.
to celebrate, AWD took me out to dinner at one of our favorite places, where i got one of my favorite sushi rolls and enjoyed a night out with my favorite guy.
in this case, at least, it turned out that forgetting about myself and serving someone else was just the right medicine. even better than watching a break-up video on repeat. imagine that.
1 comment:
:)
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