Here's a fact about myself that most people probably would
keep to themselves: I love being dirty. I mean covered in filth. I love looking
down at a pair of hands that are crusted with mud and grime. I love when my
hair is all matted together from sweat and lake water. I love when I can look
down at my clothes, and it takes me a few extra seconds to distinguish where
the muck on my attire stops and where the muck on my skin begins. And, on the
flip side, I hate showering. In my
mind, showering is such a burdensome chore: undressing, waiting for the water
to warm up, standing under the water, shampooing, rinsing, lathering up my
body, rinsing, drying off, doing my hair, putting on deodorant, dressing. If it
were at all socially acceptable (don’t worry, I know that it is not) I would
stop showering completely. And it would be glorious.
Now, you might argue that showering is a selfless act. “I
shower for the benefit of those around me,” you might say. Well, I say that you
are wrong! Showering is not a selfless act, it is a selfish one. We, as humans,
care deeply about how others perceive us; what they think of us; and how they
talk about us when we are not listening. I believe that for most (and I will
admit that I do know a few exceptions) showering is more of an act of pride
than one of humility, because no one wants to be labeled as “that guy that
smells bad/looks dirty/doesn’t care about how he looks.” We want to be regarded as clean: as
sanitary: as normal.
But we are not any of those things.
Humans are messy. Everyone has dirt in his or her life because everyone
has made a mistake at one time and/or another. However, like showering, we try
to wash away this dirt from the eyes of those around us every day. We try to
hide the things that we did that we are ashamed of because it is not socially
acceptable for those things to be brought to the light. And, just like
showering, that constant covering of the dirt in our lives can be an exhausting
process.
Now, I am not saying that everyone should stop showering all together:
in either the literal or the figurative sense. There is a reason that we
shower: it is good for our physical well-being to be clean. Similarly, it is
unhealthy for a person to be walking around divulging their life-dirt to
everyone they see.
What I am saying is this: sometimes, in the right setting, it can be
fun to be dirty. For example, if I were going to an interview, being covered in
mud would not be the best life choice. However, when I am camping with my
friends, the dirtier I can get the better. The same goes for the messiness in
our lives. It can be good (it can even be fun) to be filthy with a good friend.
When John, Levi, and I slept outside all those nights, we stopped showering. We
wore our muck on our chests, and not a single judgment was passed. It was not
until our dirt was showing that our friendship became the stuff of legend. Something
magical happens when you have to wipe the dirt out of your own eyes to see your
friends doing the exact same thing.
This is why Sam and Frodo had a bond that the rest of the Fellowship
could not comprehend. This is why Timon and Pumba so easily accepted Simba. I
would even argue that this is why nobody but Han Solo could understand
Chewbacca.
They didn’t hide the dirt. They stopped showering.
