Why I’m Not Dreading Holiday Chores This Season - The Opinions

Summary

The Opinions: Why I’m Not Dreading Holiday Chores This Season

Episode Release Date: December 16, 2024
Host: Lydia Sohn, United Methodist Minister, Writer, and Mother of Two (soon to be three)

Introduction and Personal Background (00:35 - 02:30)

Lydia Sohn opens the episode by sharing her journey from being a highly efficient, high-achieving individual juggling career and home life to experiencing a significant shift after becoming a parent. She describes the overwhelming sense of reduced time availability that challenged her prior sense of efficiency.

"I've always been a very efficient person. I'm a kind of a high achiever type, you know, doing really well in my career and my home life and exercising and cooking and all these things."
— Lydia Sohn [00:48]

Faced with the demands of parenthood, Lydia began utilizing various services to streamline her life, aiming to balance her responsibilities effectively.

Outsourcing and the Quest for Efficiency (02:31 - 04:10)

In an effort to manage her expanding to-do list, Lydia turned to services like DoorDash for food delivery, Instacart for grocery shopping, and Blue Apron for meal planning. She reflects on her initial mindset influenced by other parents and self-podcasters who advocated for outsourcing to focus on personal strengths.

"We know that parents want their teens to have safe, meaningful experiences online."
—Gilda Charles [00:02] (Note: This quote is part of an advertisement and may not be directly relevant to the main content.)

Lydia acknowledges the temporary relief these services provided but hints at a deeper transformation in her perspective on labor and chores.

Discovery of Spiritual Perspectives on Labor (04:11 - 05:50)

Lydia delves into her professional duty to explore new and spiritual authors, leading her to "The Wisdom Way of Knowing" by Episcopal priest and writer Cynthia Bergeau. She highlights the chapter where Bergeau describes a spiritual retreat grounded in the Benedictine monastic rhythm of ora et labora—pray and work.

"Prayer eight times a day, and it's divided with meals and manual labor... the Benedictines do follow a daily schedule of prayer and work."
— Lydia Sohn [04:45]

This revelation marks the beginning of Lydia's reevaluation of domestic and physical labor, recognizing its inherent spiritual and developmental value.

Reframing Domestic Labor as Intrinsically Valuable (05:51 - 07:20)

Motivated by Bergeau's insights, Lydia reflects on her previous perception of chores as mere time-consuming tasks, akin to a zero-sum game where every action detracted from another. She experiences a paradigm shift, viewing these activities as fertile ground for creativity and problem-solving.

"Maybe these tasks that I was seeing as so time-consuming, that it was actually a very fertile time for other solutions and brainstorming and creative work to be done."
— Lydia Sohn [06:30]

She emphasizes that this new perspective transforms chores from burdens into meaningful, sacred acts that foster personal growth and spiritual connection.

Personal Experiences and Insights (07:21 - 08:19)

Lydia shares personal anecdotes illustrating how domestic tasks have been sources of inspiration and clarity. She recounts the moment her first book idea came to her while vacuuming, underscoring the unexpected moments of creativity that arise during mundane activities.

"My very first book came to me like a lightning bolt when I was walking my daughter in her stroller... it came to me while I was vacuuming the house."
— Lydia Sohn [07:50]

She advocates for embracing boredom during chores, allowing the mind to wander and open up to spontaneous ideas and solutions.

Encouragement and Conclusion: Embracing Labor as a Spiritual Act (08:20)

As the holiday season begins, Lydia addresses the dual nature of the holidays—joy intertwined with stress from increasing responsibilities. She urges listeners, regardless of their religious affiliations, to perceive domestic labor as a sacred act of love and connection.

"An act of love for yourself, for your home, for your loved ones."
— Lydia Sohn [08:00]

By redefining chores as meaningful and sacred, Lydia posits that individuals can remain present and find joy in the holiday season, transforming obligatory tasks into opportunities for personal and spiritual enrichment.

Key Takeaways

Perspective Shift: Transitioning from viewing chores as burdens to recognizing their intrinsic value enhances personal well-being and creativity.
Spiritual Connection: Integrating labor into a spiritual framework fosters a deeper connection with oneself and loved ones.
Creativity in Routine: Mundane tasks can serve as catalysts for inspiration and problem-solving when approached with the right mindset.
Mindfulness During Holidays: Embracing domestic responsibilities as acts of love can mitigate holiday stress and cultivate a more present and joyful experience.

Notable Quotes

"I've always been a very efficient person..."
— Lydia Sohn [00:48]
"Prayer eight times a day... the Benedictines do follow a daily schedule of prayer and work."
— Lydia Sohn [04:45]
"Maybe these tasks that I was seeing as so time-consuming..."
— Lydia Sohn [06:30]
"My very first book came to me like a lightning bolt..."
— Lydia Sohn [07:50]
"An act of love for yourself, for your home, for your loved ones."
— Lydia Sohn [08:00]

This episode of The Opinions provides a thoughtful exploration of domestic labor, encouraging listeners to find sacredness and purpose in everyday tasks, especially during the bustling holiday season.

Transcript

Unknown Host (0:00)

Support for this podcast comes from Instagram.

Gilda Charles (0:02)

My name is Gilda Charles and I'm a product manager at Meta. I'm also a mom of two. We know that parents want their teens to have safe, meaningful experiences online. So the idea of the new Instagram teen accounts is to create an experience with safety features and content protections all built in. This new experience is really designed to better support parents and give them peace of mind that their teens have the right protections in place by default.

Unknown Host (0:28)

Are you the parent of a teenager? Get more information@instagram.com teenaccounts.

Lydia Sohn (0:35)

This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

Unknown Host (0:48)

My name is Lydia Sohn and I'm a United Methodist minister, writer, and a mom of two, soon to be three kids before I had kids. I've always been a very efficient person. I'm a kind of a high achiever type, you know, doing really well in my career and my home life and exercising and cooking and all these things. And then when I had my first child, I was so taken aback by how much less time I had available to do all the things that I normally did. And so that's when I started getting very drawn to these services that promised to help me organize my life better. You've got a long to do list. Thankfully you have DoorDash. Doing my shopping through Instacart saved me so much time and made this cleaning routine possible in 2024. My goal is to ditch the delivery apps and cook at home. And Blue Apron makes it so much easier. So we subscribed to Blue Apron and those kind of like cooking companies for a while just to make meal planning easier. We had a cleaner for a little bit and at the time I was also kind of knee deep in these authors and self podcasters who were also parents like me and growing in their careers who encourage this, like outsource as much as you can so that you can actually do what you're good at. And so I was kind of in that mindset for a while. But for my work, it's my job to make sure that I'm always reading a lot of new interesting authors and spiritual authors in particular. And I came across the Wisdom Way of Knowing. It's a book title by Episcopal priest and writer Cynthia Bergeau. And in the very first chapter she describes this spiritual retreat where she was leading participants where they had these breakthrough experiences in their hearts and their souls and they were following the Life rhythm of the Benedictine monastics, which is ora et labora, and that's a Latin phrase for pray and work. And sure enough, the Benedictines do follow a daily schedule of prayer and work. So I think prayer eight times a day, and it's divided with meals and manual labor. And that has always been a part of their life rhythm. And she was talking about how she used this, you know, in the modern day, she uses rhythm with their retreatants. And she didn't cut out any of the chores like cooking and cleaning, and even like, demanding tasks like chopping wood for the community, because she saw that labor as an essential part of their spiritual and intellectual development. And that's when it occurred to me that maybe domestic labor and physical labor in general, that there was something intrinsically valuable to it, and that it wasn't excessive or extraneous, as I had been seeing it for most of my adult life. So I started reflecting on this idea of labor, physical labor, menial labor, domestic labor being intrinsically valuable. And I reflected on how it mapped onto my own personal experience. And I started examining the way that I was seeing it, because before, I was seeing it very mathematically as a zero sum calculus. If I cook dinner, that means I can't work on my essay. If I vacuum the house, that means I have to sacrifice something else. And then I realized after reflecting that maybe these tasks that I was seeing as so time consuming, that it was actually a very fertile time for other solutions and brainstorming and creative work to be done. And just that perspective shift has made all of those chores feel so much more important and valuable. We've just begun the holiday season, and I know that the holidays can bring a lot of joy for people, and it can also bring about a lot of stress because there's a longer list of tasks that we need to take care of, chores we need to do. But these domestic menial tasks that most of us try to minimize, avoid, or outsource have an intrinsic value where we get to experience something sacred while we're engaging in these tasks. And I think what makes this phenomenon so sacred to me is that this empty space that we create in our minds, that's actually a very fertile ground for new ideas to come forth for us to figure out solutions for our lives, for us to find a pathway forward in places of our lives where we feel stuck, that in a sense, we're getting help from the universe or God or spirit speaking to us when we feel like we have not found any way to move forward on our own. My very first book came to me like a lightning bolt when I was walking my daughter in her stroller. Like even thinking of the Christmas presents from my family members, you know, it came to me while I was vacuuming the house. And so as we get ready for our events or festivities, something that I would encourage all of us to do, no matter how you identify yourself religiously, is to first see labor as a spiritual act where you're connecting with your heart. It's an act of love for yourself, for your home, for your loved ones. We live in a day and age with so much information and entertainment around us that it's an intentional decision to decide to be bored sometimes when we're doing a task. But when we're bored is when we open ourselves up to spontaneous experiences of wonder and ideas. And I think when we change our view of domestic labor and see it as a gift in and of itself, we'll find that we'll be much more present to the holiday season.