Every morning, my first priority is to shower. My usual routine is to head to the showers right after I wake up. On most days, my floormates have already gone to class, and as I enter the restroom, I love when it is filled with an ambient, cold silence. The restroom itself is by no means remarkable. It is exactly what you would expect in a public men’s restroom. After I walk around the row of sinks, I face four mediocre-looking showers. The floor and walls of the shower are made of white plastic. Usually I glance around, inspecting each shower, seeing which sparkles from a fresh layer of morning shower dew, a sure sign that one of my floormates has showered in this area within the past three or so hours. Unless there are no other options left, I refuse to use an already wet shower. Just like the routine of heading to the showers after I wake up, the second shower from the right remains a constant in my life: every day, it is dry as the Sahara. This shower is always the least used by my floormates. It is by far the cleanest out of the four, yet it stands unchosen, unappreciated, for it is neither the closest shower as one enters the restroom nor the shower at the end, which has beside it a convenient metal rack that can hold clothes, towels, etc. This shower is a point of stability among a blurring, dizzying world filled with complications and change. It is the diamond in the rough. It is the holy ground.
There is something unsatisfying about entering an already wet shower. In contrast, there is something glorifying about stepping onto the dry land of an unused shower. It is like walking along uncharted territory. The shower is yours, and you have given this shower meaning and significance while the rest of the world left its presence unacknowledged. You stomp on that dry shower and puff up your chest in pride, claiming this small area your territory. You are the first one here, and no one can take that status away from you.
A clean shower is just as important as an unused one. No one wants remnants of calcified, old Old Spice. No one wants those clumped curdles of bar soap. Lastly, no one wants those icky strands of hair strewn about like vegetation. A clean shower is a good shower, and a place where one becomes clean should be clean itself.
The shower, the one that has become a daily part of my life, maintains these crucial characteristics: it is both dry and clean. Shower three has splotches of coagulated shampoo. Showers one and four are always wet. Shower two is perfect. It is the clean haven for a nitpicky loser like me.
Turning on the shower is probably the best part. When I was young, I would have to wait one or two minutes for the shower water in my home to get hot. While waiting, I would always sit right in front of the shower stall, close my eyes, and listen. The sound of water streaming out of the showerhead – that faint hiss – and the pattering of water against the shower’s interior were like white noise, a sound that pierces into my conscience yet remains nebulous. I would just listen, and my posture would slump as the sound loosened by muscles. This noise would rinse away the world around and fill my mind with only that constant sound. I would eventually be able to hear the individual smacks of water slapping onto the smooth walls of the shower. In those moments, I was nothing. I experience that same level of catharsis now whenever I turn on the shower in my floor. As I turn the shower handle, I get tingles as the high-pitched hiss of the shower slices through the heavy silence of the restroom. I don’t like to waste water, but I will stand in front of the shower for a few of seconds, taking in the noise that reverberates across the hard walls of the bathroom and bathing in that one, prolonged sound of water droplets collectively drumming on the walls of the shower.
What I appreciate most about my daily shower is its simplicity. It’s a pure white, glowing from the clean fluorescent light above. There is no complex design to the shower. I remember seeing other people’s showers and noting that they spent an awful lot of resources into making the shower pretty. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I think it spurs a different feeling than what I might get from a standard, blank shower. The inside of my shower is plain, with nothing sticking out of the walls except the showerhead, the faucet, and a metal bar for placing objects. There are no distractions. There is only whiteness. When I enter, I can’t focus on anything because I’m surrounded by blankness. The cramped space of the shower once made me imagine that I was in a blank, white, plastic-surfaced coffin, which slightly disturbed me. But perhaps this comparison is valid beyond the shower’s physical characteristics.
When I am inside the shower, I am dead. Not literally, but I feel like nothing. I feel myself blending into the background, melting into the white walls, and dissipating into the white noise. I bask in and am filled by the rich, substantive nothingness of my environment. Darkness is nothing, the absence of light, yet darkness, like some thing, can fill a room. In the same way, I feel my selfhood, my individuality pushed out of my frame of being, and I am full of nothing. Eventually, I am so replete, topped to the brim, with nothing that the walls of my self are stretched to its limits. I am turgid with nothingness. Finally, I burst, and any shred of my being, down to the very walls that held in the nothingness, disappear. At this point, I have reached a brief state of inexistence.
The white, clean walls and the noise of the shower facilitate objectivity. I am cleansed of personal, foundational bias and subjectivity and feel like I am observing my thoughts as an outsider. All the hate, the frustrations, and the confusions that either grow and fester within or latch on from the outside world flake away and go down the drain with the water. The convolutions of society, the roles, the expectations, the clash of various human identities, the irreconcilable differences between individuals, the spite, love, sadness, anger, the raw emotions, all are irrelevant within the confines of the shower, which facilitate nothingness, the absence of individuality. Sometimes, clearing thoughts that are relative to the self and focusing through a wider, more objective and worldly lens helps me see my path from far above. I can see how I’ve messed up, how I’ve hurt others, how I’ve helped others, how I’ve helped myself without becoming selfish. By seeing the past, I then objectively plan my future. Reflecting on who I am and how I have come to be this way is so much easier without the tide of emotions and struggles that tug at and bend what should be straight, streamlined, and impartial thought. Furthermore, I can search for truth beyond my life. I know that there are certain things that I may never understand, but within the confines of my temporary tomb, I am trying to find things that I may not be able to find through the real world. This all may sound pretentious, but I am genuinely curious. Questions on topics such as human tendencies, psychological impulses, and the grandness of life emerge. By washing myself in nothingness and letting my mind wander and answer questions, I feel both cleaner physically and mentally.
It may seem weird, trying to establish some metaphysical interpretation of my daily, seemingly monotonous showers, and, frankly, it is weird. I’m showering just like anyone else, and I’m sure people feel this way and understand that they have this sensation without having to write a paper on showering. The sensation of losing oneself within the shower is visceral. No one plans to lose oneself when getting in the shower. It just happens, and something stirs deep within to let this happen and help one experience this nothingness. The sentiment that I have whenever I take that shower is consistent, however, and has become an essential part of my routine. I can’t deny the importance of that shower, whether my experiences are embellished or not. I don’t think that I would be the same person on a daily basis without it.
Aurelion 