Water (chemical formula H2O) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth’s hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms… It is vital for all known forms of life, even though it provides neither food, energy, nor organic micronutrients. –Wikipedia (as of August 3, 2022)
After stowing my meditation bench for the morning, the next few steps in my morning routine take place in the kitchen. The first item – making sure the water filter is full – usually takes just a second, but looms large in how the rest of the morning will unfold.
Mise en place is a French term that loosely translates to ‘everything in its place’. One of my favorite cookbooks, The Bread Bakers’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart, first introduced me to this term commonly used in the kitchen to indicate the preparation of space, tools, and ingredients for what you are intending to cook or bake. Despite being given this book over a decade ago, the concept of mise en place took years to finally worm its way into my brain and even longer to be put into practice. As I get older (and perhaps wiser), I now know how much mise en place can make life go so much smoother. As the proverb says, when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears.
The municipal water service at the Boss household is not the best. The water itself is extremely hard and heavily treated with chemicals. The subdivision we live in is the only sizable development on the opposite side of the valley from the water tank. With only one often troublesome water main into this side of town, the water situation felt a little tenuous at times. While a water softener takes care of the hard water, we also have a small tank of filtered water on the kitchen counter that we use for daily use. It’s a simple affair, really – pour tap water in the top and wait for it to come out the bottom. Other than replacing the filter every little whip stitch, the only thing that it costs is the time it takes for gravity to pull the water through the filter.
A glance in the corner is generally all it takes to knock this item off of my to-do list for the morning. Ms. Boss is pretty diligent about making sure the tank gets filled before she goes to bed (a good woman, that Ms. Boss). On the rare occasions that it isn’t full, I start the process of filling it up before moving on to my next item. The benefits come later in the morning when we make coffee or tea, take our medicine, and try to fight our own personal battles against a penchant for dehydration – the fuller the tank, the faster the spigot, the more seconds we save in our busy days.
As the Wikipedia quote indicates, water is vital for life. While I know what I’m writing about is a first world problem, making sure we have some en place is crucial for making our day start smoothly and allowing us to be our best possible selves. It usually takes just a second, but it’s a second I happily spend to make sure I save a hundredfold later in the day.
P.S. Writing can sometimes be anything but a straight line. My original angle on this post started with a poster I’ve run across during my work life that looks like this. While the poster was the same as this ‘lost object’, the presentation was much, much different. Strange things can be found lurking on the internet.