Worthwhile or Wonderful?

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“These exercises are quite tough,” Swami said. “It’s easy for Sam to tell me to do them. He has run a triathlon. But I am no good at it,” he added.

When he looked at us for a response, he caught me with my coffee cup at my lips, and Jigneshbhai biting his muffin.

I must admit they were not the best poses to respond to Swami’s ramble on how he can’t perform some exercises well. But even then, Jigneshbhai did respond to keep our friend from going into a negative spiral.

“Which exercises are these, by the way? Not that it makes any difference as I won’t be able to do any, but still, it would be good to know,” he asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

He didn’t have to tell us that physical exercise wasn’t one of his favourite things. Let’s just say his interests were more mental and spiritual rather than physical.

“Let me check,” Swami said and reached out to his wallet to remove a yellow card. It had a list of exercises in his workout that Sam had prescribed. He read out from that card.

“The toughest ones are, ummm, this forward lunge and then this dumbbell fly, and..?”

“Fly?” Jigneshbhai asked.

“Yes,” Swami neglected him and continued, “Lunge and fly, and this leg raise and plank. It’s half of my workout.”

He looked up to us from the card in despair. Jigneshbhai and I kept our muffin and coffee respectively down on the table with some guilt. We focused our attention on our friend and his exercises. Swami and his workout deserved it.

We didn’t know what to say. These were Greek and Latin to us. We couldn’t comment on how easy or tough they were. But something had to be said. And Jigneshbhai did.

“Well, looks like these are tough,” he said. “Ask Sam to show you how to do them.”

That produced a scowl from Swami.

“Well, he showed them. He does them easily. He is so good at them. He is just smooth and wonderful,” Swami said.

“Hmmm. That’s alright. He is a professional. You will also get better over time,” I consoled Swami.

“No chance. You guys have no idea how bad I am. And how good Sam is at it,” Swami had started spiralling down a bit.

Jigneshbhai and I stole a quiet glance.

“It’s not necessary to be wonderful at it, like him,” Jigneshbhai said. “At least you are doing something, unlike us,” he added.

“We are only eating this,” I added, consoling Swami pointing to the muffin.

Swami’s eyes warmed up a bit though I could see that for someone like him being bad at something was tough to digest. He was used to being good at a lot of things, or at least, wanting to be good at a lot of things. That was the nature of his world.

“There’s no rating and Raichand in this,” Jigneshbhai added with a wink. “No one is watching.”

That got some smiles to Swami. He picked up a muffin and said, “Maybe you are right,” he said. “As long as I am doing them, I don’t have to care much about whether I am good at it. Especially, as good as Sam.”

“Absolutely,” Jigneshbhai said. “As long as it’s something being done rather than nothing. Maybe you will get better and will teach us in a few months,” he added. “Or maybe you won’t.”

That’s when I saw that the wealthy old man walked across from the adjoining table towards me and Swami. He looked at us and tapped Swami on the shoulder.

He left us with some food for thought when he said, “As long as something is worthwhile, don’t worry about being wonderful at it. Worthwhile is better than Wonderful.”

***

PS: A quick update from me is that my story “Soulmate” was accepted for publication by Literary Yard, a journal that is ranked among the top 100 literary blogs on the planet. A big thanks to all of you for reading it, sharing it and commenting on it. Writing the story was worthwhile; a journal publishing it is wonderful. You may check it out here. -Ranjit Kulkarni