The Dishwasher

There is something curious about loading a dishwasher. 

The plates, bowls, cutlery and cups all have somewhere to go. Yet two people can stand in front of the same empty racks, with the same dishes, and arrange them entirely differently. 

Both want everything to come out clean. Yet often, someone rearranges it. Perhaps with a little frustration, or a sigh, almost as though the other person had placed everything badly on purpose. 

Perhaps they did. 

But perhaps the arrangement made perfect sense from where they were standing.  Each arrangement carries its own logic. Yet somehow, the way we see it can begin to feel less like one possible arrangement and more like the arrangement that makes sense. 

Perhaps this is because we know why we put each thing where we did. We remember the cup that wouldn’t fit elsewhere, the plate angled to leave room, the fork turned down so no one would catch their hand. 

When we look at someone else’s arrangement, we don’t see any of that. We see only where everything ended up. 

Our own choices arrive with their reasoning still attached. Theirs simply appear. And perhaps, without noticing, we begin to confuse what we can’t see with what was never there.