radish times

So we got really nervous. We thought we lost BoBo.

But then, after 15 minutes of sitting very quietly, out from behind the absolutely empty couch…. came BoBo.

You tell us, where was he?

Saturday, BoBo completely disappeared. Peter and I looked EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE in our apartment we looked. We pulled out the bed from the couch, turned the whole thing on its side and looked in every area of it and found no BoBo. We looked through every closet, under every bed, behind every couch, under every piece of furniture.

“I should be doing this, and that. I should be doing this and this and that. I need to do this. I want to do that. I gotta do this and this for that.” — this is the refrain in my head. It is the chorus of my days. It is the opera of my weekends.

Recently, being in the company of so many SHOULD BE’s and WANT TO BE’s, I am not at all sure that my SHOULD BE’s have any more merit than my WANT TO BE’s.

I want to be relaxed and open. I should stay home and study economics. I want to spend time with Peter and listen to music. I should be researching my assignment for school. I want to play with the cats and never get cross. I should get everything in order because there is not another weekend for five more days. I want to do things when I want to do them. I should do things when they are assigned.

I was in a workshop many years ago about change in organizations. The workshop leader, and theory developer, talked about THE BIG ASSUMPTION. He said that we have many commitments in our lives. Some we recognize and take pride in, like a commitment to equality and social justice. Others we hold tightly but don’t acknowledge because they don’t sound so noble, like a commitment to save ourselves’s from painful situations.

The man said that behind these self-protection commitments, there is always THE BIG ASSUMPTION. THE BIG ASSUMPTION is something like “If they laugh at me, I will die.” The man said that THE BIG ASSUMPTION may be true. It may also be false. You don’t know, because it is an ASSUMPTION.

So the question comes to me, circuitously, what is THE BIG ASSUMPTION behind all these SHOULD BE’s?

If I don’t work on my History and Politics in the Caucuses paper TONIGHT… If I don’t do my economics problems set TONIGHT… If I don’t clean the bathroom floor TONIGHT… If I don’t vacuum the apartment… If I don’t cut my finger nails TONIGHT… If I don’t finish all the readings TONIGHT… If I don’t have the energy to stay up until midnight… If I don’t do ANYTHING TONIGHT…

… I will never ever do these things because I will learn to be lazy and get used to it and then tomorrow night I won’t want to do any of them either, AND it is not just tonight, it was ALL weekend that I didn’t do anything AND who do I think I am not working and still passing classes? HOW can I assume that this will last? It cannot last. There is a consequence for lazy people: they fail. I haven’t done it yet, but if I do….

and so on and so forth into a gross and utterly useless ad nauseum.

The thing is that none of these ad nauseum assumptions are of any real importance to me and my whole life. They don’t bare on my marriage, my career, my happiness, my peacefulness…

The don’t bare on these things, UNLESS I let them grab hold of me and go on ad nauseum. THEN they are deeply dangerous because I am all caught up in them and cannot see the things that are really important.

So, I am trying to stay free of grabbing ad nauseum. I think it is the struggle of all people, especially busy and un-buzy ones.