29-Jun-2020
Young Miss Struggle was home early due to band being cancelled. So, she mucked about for an hour or two. Then, it was time to collect young Struggle Jr and Miss Struggle wanted to tag along so that she can see her friends again at school. Even though she has already seen her friends earlier during the school day and she will see them again the next day at school. Plus, there are no other compelling reason why she needed to but she just does.
To illustrate this fallacy and to make the 11 year old understand, Yours Truly took the time and explained to her, that there are not enough hours in the remaining day to do A, B, C, D, E, F, G and also take that 30 mins trip to school again, which is completely unnecessary for her as she has seen her friends already and will see them tomorrow. However, rather than to impose and thus never letting young Miss learn about the value of time and decisions, she was given a choice to choose between making that trip and to give up something, or don’t make the trip and carry on as normal. Anyway, she elected to give up some ipad time before dinner in order to take the trip.
On the way to school, it was further explained to her that her choice was very unwise. Had she spent that time more wisely, like practicing her instrument, she’d be 30 mins ahead of the next student who hadn’t practice, that she could become a better player. Of course, like most kids, when do they ever listen. (Even as adults, we probably don’t listen either!)
So, we got to school, Miss Struggle caught up with her friends for a few minutes and on our way back home, proceeded to tell Yours Truly defiantly that she was right, that the catching up with friends was in her exact words ‘worth it and I am happy’. So, I retorted back along the lines of how does this make you better off. Of which the response was I get to see my friends, I’m happy and that’s all it mattered.
Thinking about it and trying to work out ways to reach out to her that time is valuable and all she is doing is hurting her future self, Yours Truly came to a sad and profound realisation that our 21, 31, 41, 51, etc year old selves are not that much different. When presented with the choice of doing something to help our future selves, we chose not to. We don’t seem to know our priorities and we often choose short term fun that is largely irrelevant in the grand scheme. Yes, friendships are important, having a bit of fun is good for the well being but is it a requirement to see and communicate with your friends every waking hours of the day? We are not talking about a ban here, what we are talking about are reasonable limits, which for most of us, is somewhat lacking. As adults, we can and therefore we do. This kind of behaviour is evident in other aspects of our lives, like the time on devices, watching tv, our hobbies, our shopping, drinking to excess and etc. It really does seem like we are living in our 11 year old shell and never grew up.
It is time to recognise and acknowledge, then as now, we have not been making the smartest of choices. Over time, these choices add up, to finally reveal to us the failures we have accumulated, like why the constant struggle and why our vision of success is still so far way. Yes we would have done some work but the sad reality is, we probably strived for too much fun instead and the price we pay currently is not reaching our goals. You see, fun detracts us and ironically that’s why we chose it because inherently we don’t want to do any work in the first place and fun is just the convenient excuse. Like how many times have you heard or convinced yourself that you’ve just got to have some fun.
So before making future decisions on whether you need to have more fun, you really have to ask yourself this important question – how is this ‘fun’ activity going to help me now and into the future? You really have to be equally brave to say and admit, I either don’t have what it takes and therefore give up permanently, or I am going to do what it takes. There is no other way to put it, you have to stop sabotaging yourself. You ultimately have the power to make your future better and all it takes is by stop being lazy and stop focusing only on fun. It’s not hard, you just have to make that choice on what is more important to you, fun now & misery later or work now & success later.
Yes, you might say, there are plenty of people who has worked hard all their life and did not amount to greatness. However, at least they gave themselves a shot, a chance. Also, on the same side of the coin, you really don’t want to go through life and at some point, thinking back with regret that you should have taken that chance to do more, to achieve more and If only you had worked a little bit harder. In short, don’t condemn your future self by making silly choices today, even seemly innocent fun can have ramifications when you are older. Your future is bright, if only you choose to climb up the stairs and do some work to remove the clouds.
Struggle Perpetual 