1st Jun. 2025
the pitiful duvet
The poor duvet cover was doing its job perfectly well. Then, suddenly, its holder exposes it to an unfamiliar situation and swears at it for not coping. Before long, it is praised again—called good, told it has done well. None of this happens on any regular schedule, and none of it comes with warning: it gets washed, sworn at, and praised. Sometimes it is even put back into the washing machine because it “doesn’t feel as though it’s been washed”, despite having been washed.
If the duvet were a dog, it would have disliked me. It might not even have stayed with me for a year before running away. The reason it is still on my bed is simply that it is not a participant capable of reacting in a way that reaches me. If it had even the means of a more active response, or any basic linguistic response—like a computer, or a dog—it would not have been left until it became this dirty, nor washed in such poor ways. If the duvet could be angry just a little more, I might still find washing it a nuisance, but I would not be able to keep putting it off.
But that is not to say the duvet did nothing at all. Even from a human point of view, it did express responses that could be read, in their own way, as anger. They were physical responses rather than anger as such, but anger often comes with physical responses, so perhaps that was the best the duvet could do. It was simply my laziness that dismissed those responses as too passive. The reason the collaboration between the duvet and me failed to produce good anger is that I did not acknowledge the duvet’s anger enough, found it a nuisance, and did not accept the duvet’s excuses. That residue built up, layer by layer, until the duvet’s anger grew into something I cannot understand, but can no longer bear psychologically. The burden felt at an unconscious level made it impossible to wash the duvet as often as before.
I kept saying it was this, it was that—that the whole world was stopping me from washing the duvet. But in the end, the real problem is me: so stuck that everything starts to look like a problem. It isn’t even my capacities, my circumstances, or my lack of skill. It is simply an attitude too lazy to look properly. Even so, trying to pin the cause down was not pointless. To say it bluntly, the effort to make a pile of excuses sound like more than excuses is what allowed duvet washing to be looked at in the first place—and it is why this reflection exists at all.
duvet washing as a collaboration
The impossibility of perfect understanding or of fully sharing a goal does not make collaboration impossible. In the first place, every other—including the “I as another”—is a frightening, unknowable presence. And making another into an ally, in order to overcome that fear, is one of the reasons collaboration happens at all. Even in collaboration with people, it is impossible to be certain that the other has a will or an intention, or that the other is oriented towards the future. And far more often, what lies inside the other is headed somewhere different from the shared purpose. And so am I.
What helps collaboration make a leap in a good direction may not be a close bond with the other, or a peaceful relationship. What brings about real results in collaboration is the friction repeatedly endured with the other in order to carry my purpose through. And if it is possible to admit that each side is uncontrollable to the other, and to say that the self will be controlled for the other’s sake, then it may even be possible to become a cool person.
Therefore, the basis for being certain that this is collaboration is not the shared purpose or outcome, but rather the state in which I am with the other person in order to maintain my consciousness If duvet washing is dismissed as not being collaboration because the duvet has no will or because the satisfaction of working together seems to be felt by me alone, then collaboration with people may also need to be reconsidered as collaboration at all.
post-duvet-laundry reflections
1. My reluctance is the result of turning away from the stress imposed by things I cannot control.
2. I am the owner of the duvet, but I do not have full control over it.
3. I decided to stop thinkng but to assume that the objects around me hold as much control over the duvet and me as the reflection has shown
4. This writing did not help me wash the duvet more regularly.