Everyday Awareness: Sorting Socks

I do a lot of laundry. Actually, my husband really does the laundry; my job is folding and sorting. The scenario is usually the same: me on the bed, at the very end of the evening, surrounded by a huge pile of clothes--some inside out, some stuck together with that ferocious static cling, some balled up and still damp.

Since I have to fold the laundry one way or another, I figure I might as well do it with some attention to the moment, some mindfulness. Spiritual sorting, if you like.

Here's what I was aware of last night:

I sort socks last, after everything else has been folded. When I first approach the pile of socks, which belong to four different people and range from very tiny and mostly pink to large and mostly black, I have a moment of despair. It's too much, I'll never find the matches, I've reached the limit of my tolerance for laundry. But as I begin to sort, the matches make themselves clear. What once looked like a huge mass of black socks, all the same, start to distinguish themselves--these have a slight herringbone pattern, those have a little pinstripe. As each match is found and set aside, the remaining socks and their matches become clearer. Order emerges from the chaos, and I can see which socks really don't have matches; I scoop them up and put them to the side, where they await the next load of laundry and the hope of finding their mates once again.

How many things in life, I wonder, are we unable to see because of all the balled up socks lying around them? What matches would emerge if we began to clear the clutter, if we matched first the easy ones--the bright pink, the rainbow stripes--and then allowed our eyes to adjust to the subtler shades, to see with clarity the variations presented to us?

A little mindfulness while sorting socks.