Last Sunday, D and I had this conversation while sitting on the terrace after dinner.
She said, "I'm gonna rewrite the song - Velai velai from Avvai Shanmugi. Aambalaikkum velai pombalaikkum velai 10 year old-kum velai"When probed further, she said, "I have to attend school, go for Hindi tuitions, do my school HW. I have to watch TV, I have to eat my dinner. My evenings are so busy"
She doesn't go for any extra-curricular activities after school. She has Hindi tuition twice a week. Though I heard her concerns, I felt she does get a lot of free, unscheduled time, which she wasn't recognizing 🙂
"Why do you say, you HAVE to watch TV? No one is forcing you. It is a choice you make, isn't it?", she listened with a lot of interest to the following gyaan from me😉
There are three categories of tasks we do every day.
"NEED TO DO" - bath, eat food, sleep
"HAVE TO DO" - commute, go to school, do HW
"WANT TO DO" - watch TV, dance, sing, play with friends, read books
If HAVE TO DO tasks take up all of our time, then we feel overwhelmed. We need to make time for WANT TO DO tasks every single day.
She then asked me, "Is going for a job a HAVE TO DO or a WANT TO DO task?"
I replied, "When we enjoy our work, it is a WANT TO DO, but sometimes when we don't but we continue due to various reasons, then it becomes a HAVE TO DO. In the second scenario, we can balance our day by allocating time for our WANT TO DO tasks. We can also change our perspective by finding meaning and purpose, so our HAVE TO DO gets converted to a WANT TO DO."
She didn't quite understand what I meant by a change in perspective. I gave her this example.
"In my 20s, cooking felt like a HAVE TO DO, but now it has become a WANT TO DO because I see how home-cooked food helps in keeping our family healthy"
P.S. On WANT TO DO, one of my favorites, as you might have guessed, is soaking in ARR music🙂 It's just been a downpour of beautiful songs from him in the past few months. I'm hooked to VTK album and love its simplicity and crystal clear melodies. Uyir Urugudhey in repeat mode. And of course, am in the process of getting addicted to PS1 songs!