The humble mop. This is the secret to a happily married
life. Believe it.
My maid has taken a month off. She has gone to her village
to get her son married off. Basically there are two important things she does,
washes and then keeps the vessels in place, and then brooms and mops the floor.
So in her absence the pressure is on us to do the same.
I think in the middle I had gotten into a negative frame of
mind at home. I probably refused to see the work at home and I would possibly
not help out as much, possibly I was tired or pre occupied, or just plain
blind. But I never saw the work and now in hindsight I agree that I was not
much of a help. This time around I was determined to be a better spouse around the
house.
I think in the middle I had an unjustifiably large ego about
myself. I thought I was helpful and did a lot of work. But I had gotten into a
bit of pride doing it, which I now see and realize. So I picked up one thing on
doing while reaching home. THE MOP.
Normally I would have hated mopping the floor. The way the
maid does it by bending over and using a swatch is impossible for corporate
backs like ours. But with the introduction of our house to this brilliant mop
has made mopping very simple. This is a lovely magic mop. You just wet it, then
squeeze it with the handle provided and start mopping the floor. I love going
in lines, tile by tile and cleaning the floor. The floor then becomes squeaky clean.
I think that’s the secret of my new found happiness. I don’t
mind mopping the floor. The clean floor acts like a beautiful feedback. Keep mopping
and keep seeing a clean floor. I was explaining to Jispa that while one cleans
the floor one must do even a simple activity like this with pride and not miss a
single spot. Tile by tile you cover the entire house and keep it spotless. I told
Jasmine “you know what, I really don’t mind doing this.” And then I thought a
while and rephrased. “I don’t mind doing this if I had the money to have a maid
to do this. I would definitely not be happy mopping the floor if I did not have
the money to hire a maid for this”. Jasmine and I had a good laugh on this. It’s
probably true. There are a lot of things we really don’t mind doing or even possibly
enjoy, but they are really fun doing if you do them by choice and are not
forced into doing it. Don’t we all humans essentially want choice?
Talking about choice, I read an interesting book “the art of
choosing” by Shreena Iyengar. One of the points she makes is that while choice
what we seem to crave for, too much choice can be bewildering to the point of
paralysis. She ran a famous experiment where she presented shoppers with a
variety of jams to taste and followed with discount coupons for redemption. The
findings were clear - The higher the variety offered, the lesser was the redemption
rate. She also says that while we don’t want
that much choice, many cultures don’t even care for choice. Possibly Asian cultures
defer to higher authority and want the choice to be made for them. You are the smart
guy with all the authority, you should know better than me on these choices.
Listen to her TED talk here
It’s a very profound learning I have had. NOT ALL PEOPLE
WANT CHOICE. I have struggled with some of the members in my team. No matter
how much autonomy you give or force upon them, they would like to defer to you
for your decision. At first I thought they were merely scared to make the
choice. Now I think otherwise. They are just not trained or mentally tuned to
make choice. You being the boss must choose. They probably see deferment of
decision as a weakness. Why can’t you choose if you are the boss? Or your
choice is obviously the right one, why should I change my world view. I think
once I changed my view on this issue, I got a lot less worked up by this lack
of decision making. I tackled it as a cultural issue and not as a personality
issue. It’s been much easier then. I can handle this much better, and I can
direct much better. My exasperation levels have surely gone down. And yes,
possibly I have become a better husband, father, friend and an easier human
being to relate to. Possibly… but then again…
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