Clothes, water, Iron and Humans

  • Post category:Psychology
  • Reading time:3 mins read
Now whats the relation in all this!!!!!!! I do not know 🙂
This weekend I was ironing my clothes. Yes, that’s another thing which I have started doing after coming to Basel. Back home it was always the “Dhobi”. Well as I said earlier, life changes with location.

So, I was ironing my clothes. Just at that moment a correlation hit me like a strike for nowhere. I realized that it was too hard to iron out the creases after the wash. I went to kitchen, filled up a glass of water, came back, sprinkled over the shirt, ironed again and wow!!!!!!, creases are gone. This is something, which I always wondered as a kid. I was never able to understand, that why my mother again puts water on clothes. She spent ample time before, just to dry out those by keeping them outside in sun and making sure they are not getting wet again by rain. So , why put water again and waste the entire effort. After that I never bothered about this.

But, now while doing this activity again by myself, I understood the logic behind it. Water simply loosen the threads and by ironing again they take the shape as the iron creases it out.

How beautifully this incident relates to human beings. A person is conditioned with certain mentality and thoughts. He knows only that way of life. It does not matter how much you try to change the person (Iron out his crease), he still retains his behavior. Just like clothes. It also depends what were his circumstances and how long and strongly he has been conditioned. The similar effect is there with clothes too. If you put too many clothes in drier, the chances of getting more wrinkles are high (circumstances). And if you put it to full dry, which generally also implies longer run-time, the creases become more difficult to remove(duration and strength of conditioning).

Similar is the behavior with humans. If someone holds very strong views, then it is too tough to make him see the other point of view. Such person won’t be able to accept the other point of view so easily. One needs to bring in a relaxed , neutral mode , by sprinkling some kind of “water”. This “water” will soften his original viewpoints. Then it would be easier to make him understand the other side and transform in a new mindset.

How long will it take, what kind and how much “water” is required depends on person to person. This is again something similar to clothes, where the number and strength of creases depend on type of clothes e.g. cotton, silk, nylon, linen etc.

This though just made me realize how easily one can pick examples from daily routine life and apply it into completely different context. One just needs to be watchful.

Keep your eyes open, be aware, be watchful and do keep laughing.

Arundeep Singh