I work 5 days a week for 9 hours. After 7 hours of sleep, the rest of my time is mostly spent thinking. And if I don’t, I at least make thinking my primary activity during those hours. The things I ponder range across all sorts of human and non-human issues, to the point that my brain locks up and I pass out in a state resembling brain death.

Last week, the pile of dishes in the sink reached its maximum, and I couldn’t find a single clean glass to drink from. The smell of leftover food at the bottom of the dishes was so unbearable that I preferred to go to a hotel in the evenings instead of staying home. Finally, driven by two instinctive urges, slackness and free time to think, I managed to wash the dishes. Afterward, I sprayed air freshener all over the kitchen for several consecutive days so I could live in that space again.

But what made me write this post was the intersection of these two things and the feeling it created. While washing dishes, I suddenly realized I wasn’t thinking about any of those issues anymore. Washing the dishes instantly resolved all my concerns. No mental fatigue, no headache, like discovering a whole new world.

This isn’t at all like "wiping the problem clean." When you wipe the problem clean, you’re accepting that the problem exists and just covering it up. But washing dishes actually eliminates the problem itself. Just like stubborn, rotting food stuck to the bottom of a pan, which cannot be guided anywhere, scrubbing those stuck pieces is like scrubbing a rotten idea from your mind. With each scrub, part of the idea is removed until both, the food and the corrupted idea, detach from their host and go down the drain, gone.

My advice to anyone concerned with solving the world's problems: go wash your dishes right now. If you don’t have any at home, go to your parents’. If they don’t have any, go to a neighbor’s. Find a dish and wash it. I promise you’ll find peace afterward.