Sounds like an odd topic to come mind when you’re tidying up the kitchen, but our brains have curious ways of transforming what should be a simple daily task into a life reflection.

I was doing the dishes and getting this common feeling of never being able to achieve the level of domestic order I need to feel at ease. There’s always something that is not quite right – some breadcrumbs on the floor, a plant that hasn’t been watered, a stain on a towel. And then I questioned myself: why do I constantly feel this way? I immediately found a culprit: my mother.

How can someone have such an impeccable discipline when it comes to keep things in order, whilst caring for an entire family and working forty hours a week? She definitely set the bar too high – she still does. Born in 60s Portugal in a very rural suburb, in a house without running water, as a child she used to take penicillin shots at the grocer’s to cure her throat infections, as accessible healthcare was non-existent. She suffered from anxiety and panic attacks in a world where you were simply not allowed to. And it was anxiety that ultimately drove her away from school while still a teenager. She naturally became a caretaker: raised two kids, cared for all four of my grandparents while they were sick (cancer, Alzheimer’s, and more), worked as a cleaner in a school.

This is not supposed to be one of those misery tales you get to see on daytime TV, which accomplish the feat of actually being demeaning to the people they are supposed to praise. We’re talking about a happy family, with food on the table. However I do get this story popping out of the back of my head whenever I read about merit and about how it needs properly compensated. Merit is often seen as a synonym to academic success, climbing the company ladder, or simply making a whole lot of money.

But here’s the catch: merit is contextual. It doesn’t look the same for everyone, so you can’t create a general rule of thumb to compensate it. If your parents already made decent money, then perhaps making even more is not a great measure of your own success (sorry to break it to you like this but you don’t have to be a genius to get return on capital). Overcoming your own struggles and still being able to make progress and contribute to society – that is merit. Contributions can be simple: raise decent children, take care of the elderly, protect nature, and pay your fair share of tax to try to raise others out of poverty. If you’re able to do this and still send a rocket ship to the moon, you are (quite literally) out of this world. Most of us are still here, figuring out how to keep our kitchens clean.