THE MYSTERY OF THE LAUNDRY BASKET

 

The laundry basket has for many years served mankind. It has served as a steady hoop, often catching shots of dirty clothes and, other times, crushing our dreams of venturing into basketball. It has played a significant role in hosting our dirty clothes without complaints for years. But legends say there is a mystery behind the laundry basket.

I do not have a single mental picture of my laundry basket being empty or even half full. All of my memories of it are when it’s full, full to the brim (when it’s fuller than full), or when there’s a bucket by its side, serving as reinforcement.

I have a few clothes, not so many, not so little. But I find it difficult to comprehend why my laundry basket never goes down, even after I wash a pile of clothes. How do I have so many clean clothes and so many dirty clothes at the same timeeeee? Luckily, I am not the only one with this question; this is a mystery that has bothered hundreds of people all over the world!

And so, I decided to unravel the mystery of the basket. I embarked on a journey—a journey of discovery. On this fateful day, I emptied my laundry basket, pulling out clothes of diverse sizes and shapes.

With each cloth came a memory of where I wore it and why it ended up in the laundry basket. At the end of the exercise, I neatly placed my clothes back.

I made a mental note to wash my clothes bit by bit, but as a lazy kid, this was a big dream, perhaps too big; my laundry basket remains full to this day.

I have, however, come up with an explanation as to why and how my laundry basket fills up so quickly. At night, whenever I’m fast asleep, a fairy (probably one of those fairies in one of Enid Blyton’s books) runs into my room, wears my clothes, and drops them at the bottom of my laundry basket.

I’m beginning to think the fairy comes with some of its clothes too; I really have no idea why there are so many clothes!

Relating my laundry basket to the world around me, I have come to the conclusion that the mystery of the laundry basket is not too far from the mystery behind life's challenges.

No matter how much we try, we cannot exhaust all that life brings our way; just as I do not have a memory of my laundry basket without dirty clothes, almost nobody can look back on a single point in their lives void of challenges.

The basket containing life challenges simply sustains this mystery—it is never empty!