The Top Secret To Happiness Is Not Doing What One Likes, But In Liking What One Does

There are things I do because I want to do them: Watch Aamir Khan movies.

There are things I do because I have to do them: Read for Madhu’s seminar class.

There are things I do because everyone else is doing it: Go to Yummee’s to grab lunch.

AND then, there are things I do not want to do at all: Traveling in the metro.

But you know what? Sometimes it is doing the things we don’t want to do that most pushes us to grow.

Recently we went out on a village trip with the Loreto Day School girls. At first I was skeptical. We got to Loreto Day School Sealdah at 9:00 A.M and were loading the bus. Once I made it on the bus I didn’t want to go the village anymore. The bus was jam packed; some girls were standing on the aisle because there were not enough seats. Are they going to stand up the entire 2 hours of traveling to the village? The answer was YES. I felt bad. If I wasn’t here one girl could have sat down in my spot.

The Loreto girls were all assigned into different groups to go to different parts of the village to teach 1^st-4^th standard student. They had a blurry lesson plan about what they were going to teach their village students. Plus, the Loreto didn’t even want to be there in the first place which really killed the enthusiasm and mood for me. The sun was beating down on us, frying us alive. I did not want to be in the village once we got off the bus.

The Loreto girls were so young and clueless about what they needed to do. They didn’t have any backup plan. When we arrived in class they told the students to take out a sheet of paper and write their names in English. None of the students had paper or pencil. Their lesson plan went down the drain right from the beginning. It’s still very courageous of the young girls to work up against something they are not prepared for at all. So me being the Breakthrough Teacher that I am, I jumped in and improvised.

But to my surprise there was so much to gain from this experience. At first I detested coming here but at that moment I was so glad I was there. Life is a strange, strange thing; seems like people tend to find their strengths at their weakest point. As for me, I found ‘like’ at my ‘hate’ point.