What toilet brushes have taught me
Philosophy. Values. Purpose. Writing about these sorts of things is hard. Too often they feel intangible. Like trying to catch a fruit fly; you snatch at a concept, but open your hand to reveal you’ve not grasped anything.
But there’s one daily item that has taught me more about life than any other, and acts as a constant physical reminder.
The toilet brush.
I’ll try leave the bog humour alone. But I will warn you; shit’s about to get real.
Toilet brushes are great philosophical tools in my life because they force me to ask a single question:
Am I prepared to deal with my own shit today?
We’re all individuals. Each one of us has our own unique story that defines us and makes us who we are. Some of these narratives might be mostly happy, positive experiences. Others could sadly be built on waging through turmoil and tribulations. While others still might represent something inbetween.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what’s come before because a universal objective truth is that we all have our own shit.
Maybe it’s emotional baggage from a tumultuous childhood or a bad breakup, or on-going physical struggles from a once-in-a-lifetime accident, or mental upheaval from suddenly losing our careers, or a loved one. We are all battling something. And most likely any one of these events can present us with difficult or perplexing emotions. Sometimes they ear up when we expect them to, other times when we’re not even aware of it. This realisation sucks. And those moments are not only difficult, but usually something that’ll persist in our lives to some degree.
But what truly matters is: how willing am I to deal with my own shit?
To return to toilet brushes:
Do I go about my business, not looking back and hitting the flush button to try and forget all about it, hoping to carry on in ignorant bliss for another day?
Do I create expectations that it’s not my problem to deal with it and that someone else will come along and take care of it? (Do you think Donald Trump has ever used a toilet brush?)
Do I expect someone, perhaps a romantic partner or family member, or something, maybe our careers or vices, to make it disappear?
Or do I take stock of the situation, acknowledge that the fairest and most reasonable thing to do in this world is to deal with my own shit, and in doing so try to leave behind a situation for others that I would want for myself?
Creating a set of values, having a life philosophy, defining your purpose can be many things to many different people. But this process itself inevitably always has one central thought at its core:
“We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.”
[Sidenote: Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher who was born into slavery c. 2,000 years ago and became disabled when his master deliberately broke his leg. So it's fair to say that he had some stuff going on.]Experiencing strong, puzzling or difficult emotions is my own shit.
This realisation is what people refer to as ‘adulting’. And like all the memes, it’s impossible to avoid.
Do you have moments when you feel angry, embarassed, fearful, jealous, sad, confused? Of course you do. We all do. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The reasons why you experience those feelings under certain circumstances are almost inevitably a product of your own unique story. The process of feeling emotions is not something to be judged, nor a fault or weakness, but rather opportunities to discover information about ourselves.
But how you respond to those emotions is always your responsibility. You are responsible for how you deal with your own shit.
Picture a moment for yourself when you’ve suddenly felt angry about something. Perhaps it was something as trivial as someone cutting you off in traffic, or something more significant like getting unfairly passed over at work. Or think back to when you felt grief, or sadness, or that you weren’t good enough. How do you respond to those core emotions?
Do you slam the lid and try to flush them away, refusing to look to see if they’re still there?
Do you act out and hope others will simply ignore your volatile outbursts?
Do you silently cross your fingers that someone or something else might eventually scrub away those shit feelings for you?
Or do you face up to them, recognise this is part of daily life for us all, and take responsibility for doing the messy work of dealing with your shit so others don’t have to?
I don’t need, or want, to describe the moment of walking into a public restroom cubicle to be confronted with a situation where someone has clearly chosen not to deal with their own … circumstances. And, in doing so, have made the situation someone else’s problem.
But this is what we do when we don’t take responsibility for our own emotions in our daily lives. Refusing to confront the difficult, messy, vulnerable aspects of what makes each of us, us, is the emotional and maturity equivalent of demolishing a roadside bathroom stall and simply walking away.
Someone is going to have to deal with it eventually, and that’s not fair. They shouldn’t have to. It’s not their shit.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
I think a world with spotless public restrooms would be a pretty decent start to cleaning some other bigger issues up. But all I can really do is keep up my end of the bargain. And deal with my own shit, so people around me don’t have to.
Taking responsibility to deal with these things is always down to me as an individual. But, of course, the process of how I actually do that inevitably involves letting in those around and closest to me. Just because I have to take responsibility for my own emotions, doesn’t mean that I should deal with or go through that process alone.
Dealing with my shit means choosing how to respond to my emotions, and some of those responses might mean any of the following:
Speaking to a loved one and someone I trust about those messy emotions and feelings, even - or especially - when they don’t make sense
Speaking with a trained counsellor or therapist to try and untangle difficult thoughts
Going for a walk or doing exercise to give myself time to think about how I might choose to respond to something
Looking into approaches to enhance self-awareness such as meditation, yoga, writing in a journal or finding time to reflect on my own behaviour
Whatever works for me, or you, in order to help to choose your responses in different ways, instead of being a slave to your emotions
I am constantly reminded of this responsibility whenever I see a toilet brush. And it gives me the strength to not only take it on, but to do so in the knowledge that opening up to those around me in a fair and honest way will only see that strength grow. Rather than exposing them to a series of unpredictable reactions.
How do toilet brushes fit into your life? A cleaner world might just start with cleaner toilets*.
[*I am aware that having access to a functioning toilet is of course something that is not available to every segment of society. I am grateful that it is part of my life. But this is a separate discussion that is far bigger than this article.]
Appendix: If I was a betting man, I’d would wager a fair amount (something less than $44bn) that someone like Elon Musk doesn’t have this same approach to the toilet brushes in his life. And I say this because, regardless of your views on him, one constant about his recent behaviour is his unpredictability towards those around him. In a recent BBC documentary about him, one of his ex-wives described him as ‘one of the most emotional people she knows’. But his unpredictability shows to me that he's not dealing with those emotions in a way that doesn't impact others significantly. He's not dealing with his own shit.
Maybe, by paying more attention to toilet brushes, the Elon Musks of the world might just start choosing better bathroom appliances to base their life’s philosophies on.