Iron man

Our eyes slowly creak open. We drag ourselves out of bed, pour a cup of piping hot coffee, and try to bring ourselves back to life one more time. Every morning it’s the same. We are lost in our emails before our eyes adjust to the golden morning light. We are shocked by the digital realm.

Wake up!

Ironing is certainly not some great feat of strength, but you are altering the physical world, even if only in a very small way. You are flattening the wrinkles.

Our eyes are still foggy as we scroll through notifications. From that point on, it’s a race to the end of the day, when we finally collapse exhausted into our beds. In the ancient days, we set aside time for morning prayer. We would orient ourselves spiritually before we went out into the world. Any day could be our last, after all.

But not any more. In our age we are thrust into the gears of the great machine without any pause to enter the spiritual realm. Our minds are clogged before we even start the day. No moments of reflection. No breath of peace. No chance for quiet. We are plugged in even before we realize what day it is.

There is, however, a morning ritual that allows us some respite, a few moments that draw us away from the digital realm and back into the actual. A brief experience that forces us to focus on only that which is in front of our face. It directs us toward the small and the mundane, which, in turn, frees our mind to wander aimlessly and, sometimes, even introspectively.

For modern man, ironing is a secular rite that takes place every morning.

In our day and age, many men don’t ever iron their clothes. They don’t wear clothes that need to be ironed. Many don’t even own an iron. They take their clothes from the washer to the dryer, then from the dryer to the dresser, and that’s it. The sweatshirt and jeans aren’t ever pressed. They are tumbled. And, of course, the clothing suffers aesthetically.

But it isn’t only that. Something else is lost. It’s not just the aesthetics. It’s the ritual of ironing that’s lost.

In my daily routine, ironing comes after a shower. My eyes are still wet and my hair is freshly slicked back. I am working on my second cup of coffee at this point. I have an addiction; yes, it’s true.

I stand in front of the closet and choose my pants and my shirt. I toss them onto a chair, open the ironing board, pour some water into the iron, and wait a few minutes as it heats up. The morning light breaks through the window. The trees outside are tossed by the morning breeze. The shadows flicker across the plain fabric of the ironing board. I wait in silence.

A few minutes later the iron is warm and I begin. It’s a boring task, ironing the crease in my pants. Making sure the front, back, and sides of each leg are all tended to. Taking time to iron in between every button on my OCBD. Giving the collar copious amounts of steam. Going after the sleeve plackets even when no one really sees them.

It’s tedious. It really is. But I can’t do anything else when I am doing it. I can’t text or respond to emails. I have to be fully immersed in the process. And in this strange way, it is peaceful. It is a few moments that are only mine.

The physicality of it is important. Ironing is certainly not some great feat of strength, but you are altering the physical world, even if only in a very small way. You are flattening the wrinkles. Creasing the cotton. You are making a decision to beautify your clothing. You are taking care to do something with clear intention. You are carefully crafting your aesthetic in a way that you aren’t if you simply take the sweatshirt out of the dresser and throw it on at the last minute before you race out the door.

And, in a sense, this intention leads to a feeling of ownership. When we care about something, we take time to prepare it. And when we prepare something, we start to care about it. It’s a cycle, a chicken-or-egg situation. Ironing leads to care and care leads to ironing.

Those moments of care and intention each and every morning set our minds in a different place and direct our actions down a different path. They orient us toward the world with a certain kind of certitude and direction. We start our day making a conscious effort, and that leads to more conscious effort. We have something special in these few moments of modern meditation and conscious effort.

It’s peculiar, isn’t it? It’s so small. It’s so mundane. It’s so uninspiring. And yet we are forced out of the matrix when we iron. We have a chance to be quiet and manipulate the world with our hands.

That might sound strange to a peasant from 1400 — all he did was work with his hands — but to a modern man who is perpetually engaged in the digital world, drawing back into the actual is a brief retreat into something refreshing. It’s a breath of fresh air.

That mundane routine every morning might be small, but it gives us a chance to just be quiet. It gives us a chance to just be. And that’s something we need.