Before you flush …

“I’m getting ready to flush, can you all see?”

Four college grads cram into the bathroom stall with me as I ceremoniously depress the toilet handle.

The industrial strength water pressure commences the flush sequence and we stare excitedly into the bowl.

“It’s CLOCKWISE!” we overly excitedly shout.

We’re in Australia and naturally, our first stop is the restroom, less because of our physiological need to use the restroom and primarily because of our intellectual curiosity about whether the toilet flushes in the opposite direction in this hemisphere.

Camcorders are rolling, cameras are clicking and high-fives are flying.

After four years at the Air Force Academy, we have a month of vacation time and part of it is spent using military space-available travel to get down under (not like that) (well… no, not like that).

Do we want to see the Sydney Opera House? Of course.  And we do.

Do we want to have our first taste of pumpkin soup? Naturally.  And we do.

Do we want to watch a koala bear eat eucalyptus leaves? Obviously. And we do. 

Butt, we don’t give a crap about any of those things because they’re all number two on our list; because, do we want to see which way the toilet flushes for Aussies? Excrementally! And we do (one o because it really was just water in the bowl).

When the toilet water has surged, receded, refilled and resettled, we unwedge ourselves from the bathroom stall. It’s time to hotwash, hold an after-action session and talk about lessons learned. And right here at the bathroom sinks, the ten of us (mirrors doubled our group) do just that. 

We celebrate the accomplishment of a goal. This is something we’ve been talking about for a long time. We set a goal and navigated our way to a place where we could achieve that goal. We bonded over a mutual intellectual curiosity and hatched a plan to verify the hypothesis. This was before a YouTube video could have verified it for us, but I suspect we would still have insisted on a front-bowl seat.

The lid on the debrief session is just about to close so we can head out to the sights that are postcard-worthy.

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Which way did the toilets flush in the US?”

Ten awkward glances spin around the group (now the mirrors are just mocking us and making us look twice as idiotic).

We had set a goal: to see if the toilets flush in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere.

We had planned a way to achieve that goal: use military space-available airlift to get out of the Northern Hemisphere.

We had traveled nearly halfway around the world to execute that plan: fly to Sydney, Australia and flush the toilet.

The problem? We never checked which way the toilets flush in the Northern Hemisphere before we left.

So here we stand in an airport bathroom in Australia, having confirmed the toilet flushes clockwise. Yet, for all we know at that moment, toilets in the US might also be flowing clockwise.

We were goal-focused. And when we achieved our goal, we realized we didn't know what our pre-goal starting point was.

Without a reflection on where we had come from, our journey and destination didn’t have the fullest context. Without knowing which direction the toilets flushed back home, we had no idea if the clockwise rotation here in the toilets down under was as remarkable an event as the way we had celebrated it to be.

It’s like when I drive. My rearview mirrors let me know what’s going on behind and beside me. They provide a fuller picture of my entire surrounding, not just what lies ahead. Experts (whomever they are) recommend checking your mirrors every 5 to 8 seconds. Just a glance, not a fixated stare.

I think about the Australian toilet-flushing experience every time I look at my rearview mirrors. Just a thought, not an intense memory recollection. The Australian TFE is my reminder to make sure that as I move forward, I remember where I came from.

I can easily get excited or blasé about something in my life until I look back on a timeline to update that event or status with more context. 

Maybe my excitement is premature and misplaced because I’m not much further along from where I thought I was. 

Maybe my nonchalant attitude about where I’m at fails to take into consideration how far I’ve actually come.

We’re all on a journey that is uniquely our own. Without the context of the before, we can’t fully appreciate the after. The journey and the results hold more value when we know where we started.

So, every once in a while (only experts can recommend how often), glance back at where you started. It gives you a more accurate representation of where you are right now.

To put a lid on this, all I’m saying is don’t flush away the knowledge of your starting point.