Becoming One With the Toilet

Yoga means “union” in Sanskrit, and students are encouraged to take the peace they achieve in yoga class home with them. If you’re all Zen and become full of compassion when the world has been reduced to your little mat, hold on to that. Try not to, say, steal a subway seat from an elderly woman on the way home afterward when the world is the world again.

Problem is, it’s easier to experience equanimity on your back in the final resting pose, known as corpse pose, than down on your hands and knees in your bathroom, trying to look behind your toilet to see why water is leaking onto the floor.

That was me the other day, pretty much at the end of my rope, becoming one with my rage. Plumbers had “fixed” my toilet then returned five days later, after my downstairs neighbor complained that water gushed from his bathroom light every time I flushed.

Twice they left a gritty disaster behind. Dried sludge covered the bathtub and little pieces of tile grout littered the floor. I was working the Scrubbing Bubbles when I noticed the leak.

The third plumber visit was not a charm: This time they left behind a square-foot hole that they sloppily filled with concrete.

At this point I remembered the yoga teachings. I steadied my mind the way I do during a challenging pose. I breathed deeply and meditated on the water, the dirt, and the hole.

That didn’t work. What did: A shopping trip to a neighborhood housewares store for a beautiful blue bath mat, and then to Target for some fluffy towels and a matching toilet brush and plunger.

When I got home, I arranged these items neatly in their new spots and they distracted me somewhat from the hole. I stood still for a little while. I surrendered to the fact that I did not have to wait for everything to be fixed, clean, or even dry before getting back to my life. Here was my moment of unity, carried from yoga mat to bath mat.

Little things like this count.