Could I do that......?

Cleanliness is next to godliness. This is a popular saying that I have been hearing from my childhood days until now and rightfully so. A clean environment in itself is very therapeutic to the body, mind and soul. I don't know about others but personally, I get uncomfortable when I come into a "not so clean environment".

Can you manage to stay in a dirty environment?

I feel that this prompt is subjective. There's no perfect yardstick to use as a guideline. What one person considers as a dirty environment might still be considered as a bit clean to some other people.

I would love to consider and respond to the above prompt from two perspectives. Firstly, if the dirty environment is just within my home or primary space and circumference, then I can manage it. This of course would be due to certain factors like tiredness, sickness or unavailability of time on my hands to get the work done.

What do I mean? If my room is untidy or not arranged, I can manage to stay in it for the time being. If the floors are not swept or dishes are not washed, I can still manage to stay in that environment, pending when my strength picks up for me to go about cleaning them. If I have a heap of dirty clothes to be washed, I can manage to stay without washing them immediately until a later time but like I earlier mentioned, it depends on availability of time, strength or my health at the time. If all things are equal, then I would not stay in a dirty environment as I would go about cleaning up and arranging everything, putting things in their proper places.

For my second perspective, if the dirty environment refers to a dirty community or street, then I wouldn't want to stay there not even for a temporary basis. Two weeks ago, I was passed through a route on my way to our state governor's office as I had an important document to submit. Suddenly, a very foul and bad odour wafted through the air and permeated into the vehicle I was in. Everyone inside the vehicle began searching for their handkerchief or nose masks to cover their noses with. One lady went overboard by spraying her perfume inside the bus. It wasn't a funny ordeal. I was praying for the driver to quickly move past that stinky area but there was mild traffic and so we could only endure it.

I'm sure my lungs sent a query letter to my brain because it could not take it anymore and eventually, the vehicle moved away from there and all the passengers breathed a sigh of relief. What led to the foul odour? Well, there was a huge dump site around the place where the vehicle took and the dirty had begun to decay, causing the foul odour we perceived earlier.

What irked me about that whole experience was not that there was a dumpsite close to the expressway where motorist ply alone but it was the fact that there were residential hosuses around there. I even spied a three star hotel opposite the dumpsite just across the road. The odour was so foul that I felt like retching when I first perceived the odour.

I truly felt bad for those living within that environment. I wondered how they coped with perceiving such odour day and night. I'm sure they would need large amounts of air fresheners in their homes to combat the foul odour outside.

For such a case, I cannot mange to stay in such a dirty environment. Trust me, I would not want to come back home because the thought of having to perceive that stench again is able to give me a phobia of coming back home.

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This is my response to the #marchinleo prompt for day 22. Thank you ofor reading.

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Images used are mine.