A Tale of Two Toilets
I know this sounds superstitious, even crazy, but every time I feel energetically separated from universal flow I have a plumbing crisis. You'd think by now I would have learned my lesson, but low and behold, the pressures have been building, and instead of breathing, I leaned in.
Unattainable to-do lists—check!, Over-extended commitments—check! Minimal sleeping—check!
It was both a surprise and not that in the course of a week the water main burst, a gasket on the hot water heater failed, and a toilet started leaking.
Starting this new phase of my practice is pushing me to learn a ton of stuff that is out of my comfort zone. Ditto for living in a house. It’s very squirmy in middle life to be confronted with so many things I’m not inherently good at. Or that was my story until I realized I can't be bad at things I’ve never actually done.
“Bad at” was a way for me to bypass the fear of being a beginner. From a cost-benefit perspective, me trying and not succeeding and me not trying at all lead to exactly the same place--a $500 house call with Athens Plumbing. So clearly the costs aren’t only financial.
If I try and I fail:
I will be wet and dirty--lots of things cause that.
I will be without a toilet for many days--also likely, given the current labor shortages.
I will have to admit that being smart and being skilled are different--that is also apparent.
I will also have to admit that I feel more vulnerable and more helpless as a single human in a new place than I have in a very long time. DING DING DING
That is the $500 risk, actively feeling my vulnerability vs. tacitly accepting defeat. Being vulnerable causes waves of internalized and escalating fear whereas defeat stokes easy-to-offload resentment. After all, I might be suffering because mercury is in retrograde. Or, the universe might be sending me signs to pack up ship and get a real job and let's not forget all those who never taught me about water mains or toilets or anything practical…It’s just oh so much easier to curse the fates than face the fear.
CHARTING A NEW COURSE
One of the things about being a beginner is that you don’t just have to learn. You have to learn what you have to learn. I spent a bunch of time on YouTube figuring it out. In one of the videos, the repair was rated as a 2 on a scale of 5 of difficulty. I thought, great! By any standards, I am easily a 2 so I went to Lowes and picked up materials.
What I did not do was bookmark the tutorial. That meant another round of research which turned out to be incredibly important. In the new episode of man vs toilet, the plumber ran into all kinds of problems. When he got out the hacksaw! I thought, “Oh shit! I’m not going to get through this!”
And then I revised. I can stand on my head and I can fix this (f**king) toilet. “THIS IS MY YOGA.”
THE RESULT
I won’t take you through the blow by blow of the repair but I will say that it involved a phone call to a friend, 2 additional trips to Lowes, 2 mental health breaks, and a bag of rags to mop up the first failed attempt.
The hardest part of the experience was not the actual labor or the problem solving, it was the fear triggers that kept rearing up each time I hit a roadblock. I was surprised at how much shame I felt at being green at something so basic. Most of us don’t have much connection to the world we live in—from how to grow our food, to how our mechanical world works, to how our technology works, or even how we work. It’s this fundamental disconnection that makes us disequilibrate when things go wrong.
I am 100% certain that I will not be the queen of all things DIY, but I now have a sense of what it takes to break through my own self imposed glass ceiling. “THIS IS MY YOGA.”
THE AFTERMATH
So far, the repair has held and I am relieved. HOWEVER, not a week later another toilet in my charge broke so I am now preparing for that repair sans (overwhelming) fear. Dwelling upkeep is a sisyphean task, which I am now awakened to, and appreciate differently knowing how much time, skill, and cost is really involved.
I also know that I have bigger work to do besides plumbing—like admitting that start up mode has its challenges that are kicking up significant toilet-sized fears.
But that my friends is grist for another mill. May your commodes be stalwart and your souls be well, and I look forward to seeing you all very soon.