A profound lesson from a bathtub that is never used

When I recently wrote about ‘upstairs’ houses, you know, the big houses some of us build to achieve our long-running dreams of living a better life than we did in our childhood, I got quite many emails from readers who identified with what I had written.

One of them, a woman in her early forties, told me that she had a big house — five bedrooms, four en suite, and a study room that they rarely used since her children mostly did their homework in the dining area.

She informed me that even though she was yet to get to the regret stage of building a big house since her children were still young and the space was therefore well utilised, she regrets spending money on a bathtub.

To begin with, where she lives, she informs me, the water supply is irregular, therefore, filling a bathtub with gallons of water, which she would then release down the drain, would be very foolish indeed. Initially, when she and her family had just moved into the house when it rained, she would make a point of trying to treat herself to a bubble bath, just like those women in movies, wine glass in hand, candles scattered all over the bathroom floor.

Unfortunately, being a working woman with small children, she quickly learnt that she did not have the luxury of time, especially the luxury of time to sit in a bathtub for 20-30 minutes. She was either rushing off to work to avoid our legendary traffic jams or attending to her children’s many needs. And when she got home from work, all she could bring herself to do was take a quick shower and go to sleep.

“I rarely use it, it is one of the most useless items I’ve ever spent money on,” she concluded.

But this is not about bathtubs. Her email got me thinking about all those things that we have saddled ourselves with and that we thought we needed but don’t. Rather than make our lives easier, they are, instead, dragging us down, suffocating us, preventing us from moving forward or achieving our dreams or life’s purpose.

Or bringing out the worst in us. It could be a friend that is a bad influence, the one that brings out the worst in you, the one who makes you do something you would rather not do or something you promised yourself to never do, or are trying to wean yourself of.

A colleague was recently telling me that she was planning to treat herself to a holiday this year to celebrate an important achievement that had been a long time coming. The only problem was that her closest friend had travelled abroad for further studies earlier this year, and would be away for two years. She therefore could not think of anyone else to accompany her for the holiday, and she didn’t want to go alone.

She often talked about her sister, whom she seemed to get along with. From our random chats, she often mentioned her and from what I had gathered, they spent a lot of time together, and as a result, their children were best of friends. “What about your sister? I asked?”

“Stella? No, all we will do is sit and drink…”

She explained that she had made a commitment to herself to cut a number of “bad” habits from her life and going on that trip with her sister would make her go back on one of the promises she made herself this year. I found that profound, and wondered whether, if I ever found myself in such a situation, I would have the willpower to stick to the promise I made to myself to become a better person.

So, what is that costly and exhausting load you have been lagging on your back for years, a load that you know you should shed off but are hesitant to? Is it a bad relationship that is emotionally and psychologically draining? Or an expensive habit, one that drains you financially every month such that almost all your money goes into financing it?

Whatever it is, isn’t it time to offload it? To shed it off once and for all?

The writer is editor, Society and Magazines, Daily Nation. Email: cnjunge@ ke.nationmedia.com