Goallllll!!

Up until this point, I thought I had it covered. I had moved everything off the table. The computer, the cds, my endless line of hair gels, and random business cards I know I’ll never use in my life

Only one thing stood between making my room more spacious and making my dads already cramped room, more cramped….a big table, a small door!
The idea behind moving the computer table first occurred to me, when I realized I desperately needed more space in my room to do some morning jumping around in a futile attempt to stay in shape. The computer table (and the computer on it) was of no use to me because I prefer the laptop…and my father wasn’t at home to be able to oppose my brilliant plan.

Now, as I twisted, pushed, turned, pushed, lifted and pushed my large computer table…I realize that this was just NOT a match made in heaven.

My goal was to move this table out of my room. Actually my goal was to move this table into my dads room. No wait, my real goal was to have more space in my room… but then again….with every push, shove and a higher heart rate, I realized…its so important to loose focus in life…

Back to my, now strangely angled table and my reluctant door that would just not let me and my need of the hour through. When I took a moment, to breather and analyze the situation( and when I could no longer push) I realized what was getting jammed was a keyboard tray extension. “Great” I thought…. “Lemme just get the screw driver, unscrew the keyboard tray and I’ll be able to push this baby through”. I had the perfect plan and it was easy execute. I would realize only later…how wrong I had been.

So I crawled under the table, squeezed through whatever little place the table and the door offered me.. and I got out of my room…to find the screw driver.

Lemme take a moment, at this point, to describe my father’s room. Take a room. Shove a bed in it. Then, in the remaining space…get a carpenter to construct a wardrobe. In the four feet of space that remains, place five trunks that are of no value to you, but you refuse to give up. On top of the trunks (solid steel btw) have an unusually large make shift temple with a four feet idol of a hindu god. Now get seven other idols of that size…and leave the trunks (and the gods) in crowded misery. The bed, must be neatly made… the pillows stacked on the corner… and then you can dump about five feet of rubbish on it… to make sure not one inch of space is spared. You must remember at all times, a bed is not a place to sleep..but a 5x6 meter dumping ground…with a mattress that cushions all your junk!

Anyhow…so I rummaged through all of this. And what I assume was atleast 200 calories, and 20 mins later… I emerged out of my dads room with a screwdriver in my hand. Triumphant.

Here’s the thing. The problem with our mind is that, we tend to believe that the problem we’ve identified is THE ONLY problem. We like to believe that once we’ve all found our screwdrivers, life will be simple. We all believe that once we have that screwdriver in hand… the door and the table will magically part to welcome us into our own rooms. Always forgetting, that what has merely happened is that we’ve got so caught up in our next step to our final goal.. that we’ve forgotten what that goal was!

I realized at this point..I had no way of getting back in. While I had somehow managed to squeeze out of my room, getting in was going to be a lot harder. A stool, a lucky charm and some acrobatic moves later…I was now standing on top of my computer table….about three feet above the floor. And about half a feet of total space I could wedge myself into. The fact that the human spirit knows no boundaries, worked to my advantage here…. I got back into my room… and then said to myself.. “that’s it! Cake walk now”. Again, I’d realize minutes later.. how wrong I’d been!

To screw things up, well, that’s simple. I have 22 (wait, now 23) years of expertise in that area! If you want things to go horribly wrong, I’m just a phone call away. But to unscrew something, well, lets just say, this wasn’t what I majored in. I realized the keyboard tray was installed in such a way that you had to remove five other parts before you could get to where the keyboard screw was!

I can’t remember what happened next. I can’t remember at what point I gave up. I don’t even think I remember how I finally did manage to move the table from my room into my dads… what I do remember is that when it was all done… I said “Yes, I can finally work out in my room now. I have enough space!”

I’d have loved to lie in my bed and sleep after all that hard work. But my dad’s bed was out of question, well you know why! And my own, well that’s where I had put everything from the large table...and it was easily an hours work before I’d be able to move all of it away.

I slept on the couch in the living room that afternoon.

The next morning, as I dumped all the stuff from the bed into my father’s room… to add to his collection of certified junk (on his bed of course!), I said…yes…I finally have the space to workout!

I come back, at this point, to the point I was trying to make about focusing on the larger goal. The problem, as I learnt from my large table, small door experience is not that we don’t have goals. The problem doesn’t even lie in the fact that we get caught up in smaller tasks to achieve that big goal…. The problem, I think, is that we often begin to believe that getting on the path to GET THERE is the goal! And THAT is the problem.

If all was well, with my new found space.. I’d be working out in my room everyday. What I’d forgotten though, was that while I had the intention of getting into shape… I had absolutely no intention of working towards it. And that’s when I realized, while I identified a goal….I just identified, the wrong one!