Have To.
Respect, babies, looking decent, obedience – she lines up the have-tos, asks each one who says so, and swaps the word out.
The post opens as a litany, and every line ends in a question the word can't survive: you have to respect your elders – and do they respect us? Have to have children, have to look decent, have to be obedient – to whom? Then the scene that grounds it: her mom washing the entire house before every visit, because otherwise someone might think something. Asked why, the answer is the word itself: have to.
What she does about it is small and radical at once: not a rebellion, a substitution. Want or can, instead of have to – the same dishes might get washed, but by a different person, for a different reason. Karma makes this exact point from the other side: what matters is not the act but the intention it grows from, and the same act done from obligation and done from choice plants different seeds. As you act, so you become.
She proposes a one-week experiment. It's an invitation, not – of course – a should.
Have to
You have to respect your elders. And do they respect us?
You have to have children. One is not enough, you have to have two – better a whole football team.
You have to look decent. What does decent even mean?
You have to be obedient. To whom?
You have to help everyone around. And will they help?
There are very many of these have-tos.
My mom cleans the whole house every time guests are coming. Ask her why? Have to. So they won't think she can't keep a house, that she's a slob, that she's a bad wife and so on.
Have to, have to, have to… says who?
Mom was raised that way – I don't argue, I don't interfere. But you can always change how you were brought up to be.
In my world I don't want to use the words “have to”. I will use “want” or “can”.
Shall we try a week of doing things because we can and want to, rather than because we “have to”?
Thank you for reading.
If her words reached somewhere mine don't – good. That's what this blog is for. Take what fits and leave the rest.
– Jan