I told my husband about a paper I wrote in 1988, in the beginning of grade 9, while I was in French Immersion. It was titled ‘Les Qualités d’un bon Epoux’, which translates to ‘The Qualities of a good Husband’. I wrote this over 21 years ago, two and a half years after I came to Canada, and eleven days BEFORE Chuti moved to Canada. And I got exactly what I described. I just found it and I thought I would share it with you.
As promised, today I will share the story of how Gandhi refused to strike with one his planned peaceful civil-disobedience ventures, a march, when his ‘enemy’ was distracted with other troubles, and most importantly to me, I will discuss his thoughts on Jesus Christ and other religions.
Last night, I hurt a friend, unintentionally, yet I did it. My only consolation was that it was not malicious. Nonetheless, I felt so awful that by my stupidity, I had disappointed someone I respected. Of course I apologized and fixed my error. Luckily for me, my friend has a generous heart and was forgiving. I had read recently that in every situation or challenge one faces, there can always be found a lesson of equal or greater value. I decided, while I was feeling really low about my fiasco to not wallow, but sift through the debris and look for that nugget of wisdom. In my search, this is what I found.
Past Halloween Costumes
When M asked me as usual “Mom, what are you thankful for?”, today I said “the washer and dryer”. I said this because I had been thinking of a story of my baby brother, which I proceeded to tell her. She loved the story and has been pestering my dad for more details to the story since then.
What is PDCA?
It stands for Plan-Do-Check-Adjust, and I will get into what those mean right away. This will work for anything you are trying to achieve, big or small goals, even abstract changes you are trying to establish. When I say abstract, I mean for goals such as “I want to be a better husband/wife” or “I want to be more patient”. I will discuss how to use this method for the abstract goals a little later in this post.
One of the greatest additions to our lives came in the form of this book: The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise (Third Edition)
We had a lot of great things going for us. After all, we had known each other practically our whole lives and had been dating for 8 years before we said our “I do’s”. So, how were our early days? Well, I guess I would say it was a mixed bag. There was that whole honeymoon period, so that was great. We had fun and all that. However, the differences in our personality started to have an impact on living together day to day. Read my blog on personalities to fully comprehend what I am going to describe. Chuti is a high C/S combination and I am a D/I combination which means we butted heads on certain things. The main thing was housework. Yeah, you read right…. HOUSEWORK. I was never up to snuff. This battle started during our honeymoon. So, what`s a girl to do? The worst part of it was of course I wasn’t very good at it. I tried, but as Yoda says ‘Do or do not… there is no try.’ This went on for a few years until two miraculous things happen.
For me, Gandhi is a very important historical figure. I aspire to think and act like him. Other leaders talk about how the legacy of greater leaders help them in times of decision. They can ‘communicate’ (by studying the life and decisions of these heroes) with their hero to help them navigate the sea of choices to select that which is the right and just choice. It is to Gandhi (among a few others) and his philosophies that I put forth my heart’s most troubling questions. I have to constantly ask myself “What would Gandhi do in my situation? How would he be simultaneously peaceful, yet unflinchingly just in his choices?”. Today, I wanted to share with you three of my favorite stories about Gandhi. There are many more, but let’s leave them for another day.
Here is an overview of a wonderful book we read a year ago. Even M, three years old at that time, could use the information very easily to determine a person’s personality within 10 minutes of meeting someone. There are many personality books out there, but this one is so easy to comprehend and written in a very funny style.
