A luxury
Decorative bathroom sinks at the Mt. Zion Hotel in Jerusalem.
Photo by By Deror Avi, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“Today we enjoy a luxury kings and queens throughout history had to suffer without: water is available to us just by turning on a tap.” — Alexandra Stoddard
I don’t stop to think about it often, but running water is among the blessings for which I’m most grateful. Imagine what it must be like to have to walk miles to a well for clean water to haul home, then have to use it sparingly for washing, cooking and cleaning before the next trip.
Whenever I dread scrubbing sinks or toilets or floors, it helps to remind myself that all the clean water I need to accomplish the task thoroughly is right at hand. People without running water in their home might laugh at my notion that these chores are hard work.
When family members are home recovering from illness or surgery, the gift of having clean running water is even more obvious, as it tends to be needed more often during each day. Can you imagine how difficult it is to care for medical needs without this convenience?
A couple of months ago, my brother Al and I were chatting during a visit with Mama at her new home in long term care. It’s located on a pleasant, well-run campus of various levels of assisted living for seniors. We were counting our blessings and feeling grateful that Mama had such a place available to her in the heat of the summer, or the cold winter, when many elderly or disabled people might find themselves without power or water due to a storm, a maintenance issue or a forgotten, unpaid bill. As with so many things we take for granted, we don’t tend to appreciate daily blessings enough until we find ourselves without them.
Today, I’m sure most if not all of us will turn on a faucet many times, scarcely thinking about what we are doing. Let’s pause at least once to feel happy about this incredible luxury; to enjoy the refreshment of cool water running over our hands, or chilled, pure water to drink, or a nice warm tub of water to relax us after a long day. It’s a privilege fit for royalty.
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: baths, bathtub, clean, drinking, faucet, gratitude, luxury, mindfulness, plumbing, refreshing, running water, sink, washing, water
Defeat Despair 
Good morning, Julia,
We had such a dry summer! My garden was a disaster, but without running water, there’d have been no garden at all. No beets, no onions, no flowers.
Yes, running water is such a blessing!
Susan, I’m so sorry your garden was a disaster. I feel your pain! Mine is a disaster too, albeit for different reasons. I was gearing up for a lovely summer in my flower beds, when Matthew entered the hospital in mid-May and my life was sucked into the vortex of crisis once again. Now everything is so badly overgrown that it will take many hours to clean it all up before winter. I’ve become afraid to plan or look forward to anything without some trepidation based on all the shipwrecked plans in my past. But, I think we must continue to hope for better times. In that spirit, let’s both hope for better gardens in 2024! And of course, there are things we can do now to work toward that. Spring will be here before we know it!
Jula,
We are never more thankful for the conveniences we have than whether permanently or temporarily we find ourselves without.
-Alan
Alan, so true! Sometimes I think we need those temporary losses (such as a power outage) to make us fully thankful.