Soap

Ask me again what I want to be when I grow up.

At age 34, I want to be someone who knows how to love and be loved. 

It is the simplest thing I can think of wanting to be. Certainly, also the hardest.

A magnificent thing happened to me while doing the dishes today. A fluff of dish washing foam fell into a vat of oily water and whoosh, like Moses parting the seas, the grease parted and a pristine moat of clear water emerged out of the mess.

Now, I know that soap is designed to make a hearty meal of grease. It’s what the label on the pack says. It’s what my chemistry teacher said in school. It can be proven with equations and formulae. There’s math to explain it. I've had a 25 year long career washing dishes so I’ve also come to place good faith in soap’s appetite for grease.

Yet, there was something about paying attention as it happened: a single droplet of lily-white decimating an entire army of oil & grease in one graceful swoop.

You really had to be there.

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(But of course soap doesn't really decimate anything at all. On the contrary, it builds a chemical bridge between natural foes - oil & water. Dang, science, you're awesome.) 

It's never a bad thing when your morning begins with the gentle sounds of Brian Cox discussing the 'wunders of the unee-verse' with Neil deGrasse Tyson & others, against the backdrop of London's Science Museum (BBC Radio 4: The Infinite Monkey Cage, Ep: Science Museum).

Go. Listen.