[This is an old post I found in one of my old hard drives... it was incomplete. I just completed it and thought of sharing it. The time frame may be obsolete; but the thoughts are absolute. :-)]
They say old habits die hard. But I have always found this sentence rather funny! We get used to things so quickly and without our conscious knowledge that we sometimes don’t even know we have gotten used to something. It could be anything from loss of a pet, to moving to a rather noisy (and probably nosey!) neighbourhood, to a new teacher in class, to your favourite pen not being available in the market anymore! Sure we value that which is no longer there; we still cherish it, miss it, and probably even think about it more, and more often, than we’d like to… but yes, we do get used to the here and now and new!
We had a week-long unexpected off at college recently, and it so happened that I was home at a time I am usually dozing off in class…! I had already cancelled a couple of plans – of a movie, of a get-together, and of a prospective date with a prospective new love interest! – in anticipation of my normal routine that was to commence that week, so I ended up being particularly jobless; and particularly a pain in the neck for Mom (though of course NOT intentionally, I love her after all!) Dad too was unusually free that week, so it was double trouble for poor Mommy!
They say old habits die hard. But I have always found this sentence rather funny! We get used to things so quickly and without our conscious knowledge that we sometimes don’t even know we have gotten used to something. It could be anything from loss of a pet, to moving to a rather noisy (and probably nosey!) neighbourhood, to a new teacher in class, to your favourite pen not being available in the market anymore! Sure we value that which is no longer there; we still cherish it, miss it, and probably even think about it more, and more often, than we’d like to… but yes, we do get used to the here and now and new!
We had a week-long unexpected off at college recently, and it so happened that I was home at a time I am usually dozing off in class…! I had already cancelled a couple of plans – of a movie, of a get-together, and of a prospective date with a prospective new love interest! – in anticipation of my normal routine that was to commence that week, so I ended up being particularly jobless; and particularly a pain in the neck for Mom (though of course NOT intentionally, I love her after all!) Dad too was unusually free that week, so it was double trouble for poor Mommy!
The routine in the Belvalkar household is – I get up at 0630hrs (actually, the ALARM is set at that time… I get up from anywhere between 0600 and 0730hrs!), leave the house at 0800hrs, return by 1700-1800hrs – at which time Mom usually isn’t home – then Mom gets back, I have dinner, read for a while, watch TV, surf the net maybe, and sleep. Dad on the other hand gets up at a kingly time of 0900hrs, has breakfast, goes to work, comes back in the evening, goes for a jog on a nearby hill, then goes to tutor his students at the Harmonica classes, and returns by 2100hrs, has dinner, watches the late night movie, and sleeps.
So Mom usually has the house to herself from roughly 1130 to say, 1900hrs, during which she does all sorts of things!
But last week… oh my GOD! Last week was bad! With all three of us in the house, we just couldn’t help getting into each other’s way! Dad and I went for a shower at the exact same time, though only co-incidentally. That had a rather tired and frustrated Mom waiting for us for forty-five minutes! Then we both wanted to use the computer at the same time, so we were both quarrelling. Then after Dad left, I went into my room and sat down to work on a couple college assignments on my laptop at the exact same time when Mom wanted the maid to clean my room. And then there was dust flying around everywhere, and I was scampering under my blanket to protect my laptop. Then we both started arguing – why did I have to work on my laptop in the afternoon, why couldn’t I do it at night; and why couldn’t the maid clean my room while we were all sitting together in the living room, and why did I have to move always.
Thinking about all this is retrospect; I just couldn’t stop laughing…! It just seems so ridiculous and downright funny even as I am typing it out! But these are the small, small things that really eat at our brains and minds day in and day out.
True when you are in a good mood, or even when you are neutral, it all seems rather childish. But in that Moment, you could swear the entire household is conniving to drive you to your wits ends!
This continued to happen every single day of that week, and really had us all pulling at our hair by the end of it… I was rather annoyed at the time… but thinking about it a couple days later, I was rather shocked at what had just happened that week.
How could we have gotten so used to each one of us not being around? So much so that it made it almost impossible to function normally in each other’s presence? We had just gotten used to each of us being at home only a certain time of the day – which is not a bad thing really. But it just surprised me how much we were getting on to each other’s nerve… we could have sworn never to talk to each other ever again! (In fact I think Mom actually did, at some crazy point in time… :D) It shouldn’t have to be so difficult, right? I mean, they are my Mom and Dad, and I am their daughter, and we are family, and all that jazz...
Being a nuclear family, where everyone’s busy with their own schedules all day long, and going about their individual lives while also living a life together, kind of makes us little weird in a weird way. There is no option to the way families live by these days; and it isn’t a bad thing either. But sometimes we just don’t know each other enough as people. Sometimes our friends and colleagues and superiors know us better than our parents and relatives; they know the little little things that annoy us, the little things we can’t stand while working, the way we function when concentrating on something, or just our way of things. I don’t know how good or bad a thing that is, but it sure is significant enough to wreck havoc in a family of just three too! The key to this problem, I think, lies in spending time with each other, and never letting the conversation among family members die. You may not say a lot to each other every day… but it would be enough, I guess, if you said what was right and what was wanted, at the time it was wanted. We have enough people wanting us to be this, be that, not be this, not be that… there’s too many out there, chipping at our personalities; let the same happen in your family, and you might just end up chipping at each other’s soul. After all, if you can’t be “at home” at home, where else can you be?
So Mom usually has the house to herself from roughly 1130 to say, 1900hrs, during which she does all sorts of things!
But last week… oh my GOD! Last week was bad! With all three of us in the house, we just couldn’t help getting into each other’s way! Dad and I went for a shower at the exact same time, though only co-incidentally. That had a rather tired and frustrated Mom waiting for us for forty-five minutes! Then we both wanted to use the computer at the same time, so we were both quarrelling. Then after Dad left, I went into my room and sat down to work on a couple college assignments on my laptop at the exact same time when Mom wanted the maid to clean my room. And then there was dust flying around everywhere, and I was scampering under my blanket to protect my laptop. Then we both started arguing – why did I have to work on my laptop in the afternoon, why couldn’t I do it at night; and why couldn’t the maid clean my room while we were all sitting together in the living room, and why did I have to move always.
Thinking about all this is retrospect; I just couldn’t stop laughing…! It just seems so ridiculous and downright funny even as I am typing it out! But these are the small, small things that really eat at our brains and minds day in and day out.
True when you are in a good mood, or even when you are neutral, it all seems rather childish. But in that Moment, you could swear the entire household is conniving to drive you to your wits ends!
This continued to happen every single day of that week, and really had us all pulling at our hair by the end of it… I was rather annoyed at the time… but thinking about it a couple days later, I was rather shocked at what had just happened that week.
How could we have gotten so used to each one of us not being around? So much so that it made it almost impossible to function normally in each other’s presence? We had just gotten used to each of us being at home only a certain time of the day – which is not a bad thing really. But it just surprised me how much we were getting on to each other’s nerve… we could have sworn never to talk to each other ever again! (In fact I think Mom actually did, at some crazy point in time… :D) It shouldn’t have to be so difficult, right? I mean, they are my Mom and Dad, and I am their daughter, and we are family, and all that jazz...
Being a nuclear family, where everyone’s busy with their own schedules all day long, and going about their individual lives while also living a life together, kind of makes us little weird in a weird way. There is no option to the way families live by these days; and it isn’t a bad thing either. But sometimes we just don’t know each other enough as people. Sometimes our friends and colleagues and superiors know us better than our parents and relatives; they know the little little things that annoy us, the little things we can’t stand while working, the way we function when concentrating on something, or just our way of things. I don’t know how good or bad a thing that is, but it sure is significant enough to wreck havoc in a family of just three too! The key to this problem, I think, lies in spending time with each other, and never letting the conversation among family members die. You may not say a lot to each other every day… but it would be enough, I guess, if you said what was right and what was wanted, at the time it was wanted. We have enough people wanting us to be this, be that, not be this, not be that… there’s too many out there, chipping at our personalities; let the same happen in your family, and you might just end up chipping at each other’s soul. After all, if you can’t be “at home” at home, where else can you be?
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