A towel

Definition: A piece of absorbent cloth or paper used for wiping or drying.
Imagine your life without a towel. Climbing out of a shower, putting on your clothes without drying yourself. Imagine the basin overflows and you have are running around, not able to find a towel anywhere.


Douglas Adams has an interesting towel philosophy which he shares with readers in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He says a towel is the most useful think a hitchhiker through the entire galaxy could ever be in possession of. He lists all the well know uses of the towel as evidence for his statement, but I find the last bit of rationale the most interesting:


“More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”


I am definitely not using galactic travel to get to work on a daily basis, but even I support his theory.


I try to go to gym (more often than never) early morning before work. Due to logistical reasons I then shower at the gym and go from their directly to work. Believe me you need to have quite a lot of stuff with you to transform you from the fitness fanatic into the corporate chic. Due to the sheer amount of items you have to remember each day it is inevitable that somewhere along the line you will forget something at home. And believe me I have forgotten numerous items, as different points in time.


I usually realise which item I have left at home, even before I enter the gym (so at least I am prepared for the agony that awaits me). Even though I enter into this exercise session knowing that I will not have my usual armamentarium of tools for transformation. I have borrowed hairdryers, washed by hand without the luxury of a shower sponge, used my facial cream as a body lotion (sparingly) and even went to work in my gym pants once (luckily it was on a casual Friday).


But there has been one item I could not replace with anything else. The one item, for which, when I forget it, I have to go home – a towel. You can’t borrow someone else’s, there is simply no substitution.


Thinking about the humble towel, which we use on a daily basis I realised that God wants us to be like a towel.


He wants us to like a towel to:


• Cover others with love and acceptance, and let our presence be a place where they can be protected from shame and worldly criticism


• Wipe away any memory of what others have done us wrong through forgiveness and understanding


• Become an essential part of others lives through the interest we take in them


Be a towel for someone today.