I Am a Cleaner
I invite you to listen to the words of Tolulope Ilesanmi, who left this realm in 2017. Tolu was one of the cleaners at my children's Waldorf school in Montreal, but to call him simply a cleaner feels like it misses something essential about who he was.
He had a company called Zenith Cleaners, and he approached cleaning as something far more profound than the removal of dirt. He invited people to become curious about what happens to a space when we clean with intention—to notice the subtle changes, not only in what we see, but in how a place feels. There was something in his discoveries that reminded me of the teachings of a great master. I remember his words about cleaning windows. He spoke about how, when we clean a window, we are also cleaning the way we see the world. The window becomes clear, and there is less interference between the seer and what is being seen. This simple act became an exploration of truth. How does reality appear in each moment? What changes when the things between us and what we are seeing become clearer?
He would say:
“I am a cleaner.”
Not, I am a cleaner, and I am also many other things.
But simply:
I am a cleaner.
There was an absolute quality to those words. Every word seemed to carry the full weight of its purpose and depth.
When I think about Tolu's words now, I find myself thinking about the work we do as osteopaths. We, too, arrive to roll up our sleeves and work—to listen, to feel, to clear, to make space. Sometimes we are working with what is tangible and obvious. At other times, we are attending to something much more subtle, something we can feel but cannot easily name. Perhaps our work is also, in some way, about cleaning the window. As the window becomes clearer, we see more of what was already there. The work is not necessarily about creating something new, but about removing what interferes with our ability to perceive.
And perhaps this is where Tolu's words become an invitation beyond the literal meaning of cleaner. We can become so focused on the word cleaner that we forget to look through the window. His invitation, as I hear it, is toward the simplicity of:
I am.
I find something deeply beautiful in that.
And so I invite you to listen to Tolu himself. Listen not only to what he says about cleaning, but to what might open up in you as you listen. Perhaps there is something there about how we see, how we perceive, how we touch, how we serve—and how we arrive, once again, to roll up our sleeves and work… and clean… in all senses and in all realms.
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