Beginning Action

“Action generally begins when you have to, not when you want to,” Jigneshbhai said sipping his coffee. “It starts when you must, not when you should.”

Swami and I thought that we were more determined than that. Swami for one was sure that he was and, therefore, didn’t agree with Jigneshbhai at first, as usual.

“Not really,” he said. “Unless we want to and think we should do something, how can we do anything?”

Jigneshbhai had a smile on his face.

“But we already know what we want to or should do. But we still don’t, isn’t it?” he asked with his usual twinkle in his eye.

Swami and I looked at each other. Yes, we know but still don’t. But something was amiss. We can’t be that bad, Swami and I thought.

“Don’t we set resolutions based on what we want to do rather than what we have to do? And then set them again, next year after we don’t do it?” Jigneshbhai pondered looking into his coffee cup.

This was too uncomfortable a reality for us to face. Swami and I picked up our coffee. We didn’t want to, but we had to. It was a good diversion. To escape Jigneshbhai holding this mirror in front of us, we had to find something. He continued bringing the mirror closer, though.

“Want to do is not much of a driver. It is dreamy. Have to do is real. It is much visceral,” he said. “It is a must do. It puts us into action. That’s when something happens,” he added.

“Who doesn’t want to save more and invest better? Who doesn’t want good health by doing exercise regularly? But do you always have to? We act only when we have to,” Jigneshbhai kept on tightening the screw.

Swami and I looked somewhere else. We felt that the coffee was much more comfortable. We ordered another cup.

We looked at each other. The dawn of realisation that Jigneshbhai was, perhaps, right again arose in Swami’s eyes.

“Everyone knows what they want to or should do. Wanting isn’t enough to act,” Swami said. But then a question sprung in his head. “But then, what provides the spur for action?” he asked.

Jigneshbhai had a smile on his face.

“The same reason that you ordered another coffee,” he said.

“What?” Swami and I asked in unison. “Why do you think we ordered the coffee?” we probed.

“Because of discomfort. Coffee was a potential alternative to the discomfort of my questions,” he remarked.

“When that discomfort happened, you didn’t just want to get out of it. You had to. And the alternative of coffee presented itself,” he added.

Swami and I looked at each other. What do we say, each of us thought. How does our friend Jigneshbhai manage to show us the light every time, we wondered within. We resolved to act on what we wanted to or should do, going forward, instead of waiting for the have to point. But I wasn’t confident that history wouldn’t repeat itself. Jigneshbhai was right, perhaps, that action begins only when we have to. Swami and I pondered over it for a while.

That’s when I saw the wealthy old man who was on the adjoining table all the time walk up to us. He left us with more food for thought which we didn’t want to hear but had to.

“We act not when we see the light. We act when we feel the heat,” he declared, as he walked away.

***