I confess I have been a bad husband and an even worse father. I must also concede that the missus has demonstrated the magnanimity to give me a long rope. I wonder why. If I were her, I’d have had me flogged at a public square. This, because I have amply demonstrated my inability to deploy a two-letter word when needed most: No.
Mahatma Gandhi put it succinctly: “A ‘no’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble."
That he practised this mantra diligently is well known. In an interview to Greg McKeown author of the global best-seller Essentialism, Gandhi’s grandson Arun spoke of how the Mahatma practised this in his personal life.
For various reasons that had affected Arun badly, he was packed off to his grandfather’s place. Gandhi was hugely popular then and his time came at a premium. Be that as it may, through all of the 18 months that Arun spent with his grandfather, Gandhi made it a point to spend at least two hours every day listening to all of what Arun had to talk about. Gandhi’s patient listening had a profound impact on young Arun. Over the years, as the boy grew up, the significance of Gandhi’s daily ritual of listening started to dawn on him.
The Mahatma had his priorities in place. In spite of pretty much everybody in the world clamouring for his time, he knew how important it was that he say ‘no’ to everybody else, so that he could be with Arun. Gandhi knew if he deprioritized his grandson over everybody else, in the longer run he’d strike a fool’s bargain. Because he’d have missed out on an opportunity to provide what only a grandfather can. Equally pertinent, people around Gandhi would take him for granted.
When I first read of this episode, I was ashamed. I can think of so many instances when I have been an idiot. There was this once, for instance, when my wife and I had just had our second child. She was still recuperating and could have done with all of me around.
That was also the time when I was a recent entrant to a fancy gym. I didn’t know too many people there. But as is the wont, like vultures, the instructors swooped on me and demanded a party to celebrate the birth of my newborn. I am not sure if it was the reluctance to say ‘no’ or the exuberance of a proud father. But, in hindsight, I know it was the wrong call. I said, ‘yes’ and took a bunch of protein-craving beasts to pile in all of the meat they could consume.
Even as they raised toasts to my newborn, I could tell from their faces that they were laughing their backsides off at how gullible I was. Nothing came of the banquet. When I visited the gym the next day, all of the blokes who had eaten their way into my wallet were expending energies on their personal clients. I didn’t matter. And rightly so.
Why should they have respected a man who deprioritized his wife and child for people he didn’t know? A firm ‘no’ from me and all of them would have backed off. Chances are if I’d said ‘no’, they’d have treated me a lot more seriously the next day.
I can say much the same thing about work. I quit my last assignment under rather acrimonious circumstances. I don’t intend to use this space to get into the gory details of all that transpired. Suffice to say that a significant portion of my time was apportioned to a promoter who didn’t think twice before condemning me to the guillotine. Once again, in hindsight, if I had managed myself well, there was enough time on that that could have been apportioned to family—notably my older daughter who needed her father around.
But it would be ridiculous on my part to hold the firm’s promoter responsible for how I conducted myself at the workplace. He didn’t demand I sweat my blood or spill my guts. I painted myself into a corner where I believed I had to work bloody hard. This, in spite of the logic in my head arguing I had a choice to say ‘no’. I gave in to the emotional part of me that argued even louder that I had no choice but to cave into an imaginary construct.
As McKeown puts it: “Every time we say, ‘I have to take this call’ or ‘I have to send this piece of work off’ or ‘I have to go to this client meeting’, we are assuming that previous commitments are non-negotiable. Every time you use the phrase ‘I have to’ over the next week, stop and replace it with ‘I choose to’. It can feel a little odd at first—and in some cases it can even be gut-wrenching (if we are choosing the wrong priority). But ultimately, using this language reminds us that we are making choices, which enables us to make a different choice."
What if I had chosen to say ‘no’ to instructors at the gym or the promoter at the earlier firm I worked for? If anything, my life would have been better off. But hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20.
This is borne out in a lovely book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, by an Australian palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware. For a long time, her career was focused on people living out the last 12 weeks of their lives. In all of her conversations with them, five themes recurred.
I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
On all counts, this is the kind of clarity that terrifies a middle-class man in his midlife. Until now, I have lived to please those around me. I work like a mule. I find it difficult to articulate my emotions. I don’t stay in touch with friends. My happiness is oftentimes sacrificed at the altar of the greater common good, as I perceive what is the greater common good.
Between hindsight and the insights offered by Ware, I know I have some way to go—a long way to go actually.
To start with, I now begin my days at 4.30am and am outdoors by 5 am until 7.30 am. The solitude that comes during the early hours allows me to spend time with myself, thinking of what really matters. I have come to believe there is a fine line that divides what matters from what doesn’t. In these hours, I take brutal calls on what ought to be given a pass and what must be acted upon.
I have begun to take fewer calls on my phone after 9pm. That is time I now spend with my older daughter to make up for all that I didn’t give her in the past. As my brother once asked me much to my shame: “What more can a child ask for other than a little bit of your time? And if you can’t spare her that, why did you have to get her into this world?"
I couldn’t agree more. In the short time that I have practised this way of life, I am happier for it.
This was first published in Livemint
