The Parable of the Rags
When I first got married, I was very excited about setting up housekeeping. I joyfully collected dishes and towels and blankets and sheets, trying to turn a bare basement apartment into a comfortable home. I used the home I grew up in as a model to make sure that I was properly stocked for anything that might come along. The first time I went to clean my new domicile, I discovered a missing component. I had no rags. My mother had a big box full of rags that we used when cleaning the house. There was a variety in there, some perfect for mopping up spills, others ideal for wiping windows. The rags were uniformly ratty, but they were useful.
I determined that I could not properly set up housekeeping without rags. I trundled myself off to the store to buy some. In the linens section of the store I realized that there was no way to buy rags. Everything there was shiny and new, not ratty and useful. I wandered for awhile, puzzling. Eventually I bought a stack of washcloths. I took them home and attempted to clean. The washcloths were not good for windows, they left streaks. They were acceptable for mopping up spills, but the kitchen towels worked better. The washcloths weren’t very good for scrubbing either. They were ideal for showers and baths, but I didn’t want them to be washcloths. I wanted them to be rags. I needed rags for my house.
I decided that the problem was because the washcloths were new. Once they had been broken in, they would be better rags. So I abused the washcloths. I left them out in the sun. I washed them repeatedly. I tugged at them. I bleached them. It did not take long for the washcloths to go ratty. But this did not improve their performance as rags. They just went ratty and dissolved completely. I was back where I had started.
Almost 14 years later I have a box full of useful rags and I understand why my early attempts to acquire them failed so badly. Rags are the survivors of the linen world. They are the cloth diapers that remained intact after years of mopping up baby spit. They are the kitchen towels that have soaked up so much koolaid and chocolate milk that you can’t even remember what the original colors were. They are the towels that got left outside in the summer sun for months and yet remained intact. There is no way to know when you buy something new if it will one day be a good rag, or if it will just become garbage. The only way to make rags is by using things for years until one day they are too ugly to display in public, but too useful to get rid of. It takes time to acquire a useful rag.
I call this experience “the parable of the rags” because so often in my life I am impatient. I see something up ahead and I want to get there right now. But I am beginning to understand that somethings are better if you wait for them. Some things require patience and hard work before they can exist. And if I try to rush ahead I will only end up holding a pile of useless threads.