Upstream, Downstream, and the Laundry

A frozen drain, wet socks, and a lesson in paddling

The Pattern

One of the most consistent challenges I face is keeping up with the laundry.

I have a pattern. I let it pile up until the weight of it becomes impossible to ignore, and then I run a full marathon of laundry. This morning was no different.

The first thing I did when I woke up was carry an armful of clothes down to the laundry room, which was already full of pre-existing laundry, and immediately start a load. No coffee. No easing in. Just straight to the task.

The Moment

Forty-five minutes later, I walked out to the living room while catching up with a friend I had not spoken with in a long time. As we talked, something caught my eye. A washcloth on the floor.

It looked wet.

I paused, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me. They were not.

When I picked it up, I realized the washcloth was not the only thing soaked. My socks were too. I followed the puddle on the floor back to the laundry room, where I discovered the washer drain had frozen. As a result, all of the laundry I had just brought down, and all of the laundry that was already there, was soaked.

This is usually the moment where overwhelm takes over. The cascade of why now, this is too much, I cannot keep up.

Today was different.

Thaumaturgy and the Canoe

Every year, I choose a word that reflects where I want to hold my attention. This year, I chose the word thaumaturgy, which means the working of wonders or miracles. Magic. I have also been spending time with the teachings of Abraham Hicks, particularly the idea of moving downstream rather than paddling upstream.

The canoe metaphor helps me notice where my effort is going. Upstream is when I am trying to control reality and control my feelings at the same time. Downstream is when I allow reality and emotions to exist, then ask where my power actually is. Not in preventing the mess, but in what I do next.

Alongside that, I have been practicing asking downstream questions instead of upstream ones. I am choosing this deliberately, after learning in 2024 just how much control I have over my emotional experience when I allow my emotions and reality to exist as they are, while also asking myself where my power actually rests.

Upstream vs Downstream

By downstream, I mean fewer attempts to force an outcome and less self-judgment. Upstream questions tend to sound like control questions. Downstream questions are curiosity questions. It is a small shift, but it changes the entire emotional temperature of a moment.

Upstream questions sound like:

• “How do I make this stop?”
• “How do I fix this immediately?”
• “Why does this always happen to me?”
• “What is wrong with me that I cannot stay on top of this?”
• “How do I get back to feeling in control?”

Downstream questions sound like:

• “What is here?”
• “What is true right now?”
• “What is possible from here?”
• “Where does my power actually rest?”
• “What wants to happen next?”
• “What is the next best step I can take without fighting reality first?”

The Shift

So instead of fighting what had happened, I asked a different question. How could this actually help?

Within a few minutes, everything shifted.

I had wanted to get all the laundry done anyway. Now it was guaranteed to happen. Everything was already soaked and therefore already sorted by necessity, which made the rest of the process easier. What initially felt like a setback revealed the system I had not yet created.

The Reminder

Thaumaturgy does not always look like magic. Sometimes it looks like a frozen washer drain and a wet washcloth on the floor. Sometimes the miracle is simply realizing that what feels like a disruption is actually the current carrying you where you were already trying to go.

Today, the laundry reminded me of that.