Like Your Mother's Cooking Pot
Like Your Mother's Cooking Pot
On circles and choices
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Dear Bolu,
I feel obligated to preempt any thought in your head that this letter has something to do with your mother's cooking pot. It doesn't—at least not exclusively. The title is a reference to a song we sang as kids.
"Form a big circle like your mother's cooking pot".
We would then go on to form a circle big enough to accommodate sprouting boys and girls, hand-in-hand along its circumference. My memory doesn't serve me right so I'm not sure what happened next. Was the purpose of the game to form a big circle? Was that it? Was that the essence of our playtime? If yes, then it must have been a pretty deflating climax. Nonetheless, I'm inclined to think the circle was a precursor to something else. It must have been part of a game with a grander purpose than approximating the utility of a compass.
Well.
I find the kid's play reference useful in illustrating a few points about choices. A circle is only as large as the number of hands that lock into each other. Therefore, the fewer the number of kids involved in the game, the smaller the circle. So If you were to visualize your day as a circle, such that each kid represents a good choice you made that day, then the size of the circle is analogous to how well your day went.
If the goal is to have a good and productive day (form a large circle), then we should try to make the right choices at every point during that day. And I've realized that once you make a right choice, it becomes a bit easier to make more right choices. Similarly, once a few kids decide to go out to form a big circle, other kids become more motivated to join in the game. You feel more motivated to make the right choice if the last choice you made was the right one. It's easier to continue enlarging that circle once you've started.
I suppose this is one of the reasons why we are encouraged to start our days early and with good habits—say planning your day, meditating, exercising, and so forth. There's some knock-on effect that ensues when we make back-to-back right decisions. You feel good. Of course, sometimes we make wrong calls but they are easier to avoid if we are consistently making the right ones.
We've all had days where we felt, in the end, that we didn't do enough. Days we think of as wastes. Days where the circle we formed was small or non-existent. "Oh man, I didn't do anything today". On such days, you can usually trace the cause to some wrong decision(s) you made. It could be anything. Choosing to watch an extra episode of "City Hunter" instead of revising your lecture notes. Requesting for an extra plate of food instead of walking out of the restaurant when you are on a diet. Snoozing your alarm instead of escaping the comfort of your duvet. Spending a bit more time on a call instead of getting back to your office responsibilities. It could be anything.
We make one poor choice, and we can feel ourselves sinking helplessly into more poor choices. We feel like we can't stop or break out of the loop. We feel like the effort needed to get back on the right track can't be mustered. And so we keep shrinking our circle. It’s what happens when a few kids choose not to form up as part of the circle, thus encouraging other kids to refuse the offer to play the game. It could even prompt the kids already involved in the game to stop playing. Each wrong choice we make is analogous to a kid refusing to take part in the game, and it ultimately reduces the size of our circle. The result is a terrible, unproductive day.
Make a series of wrong choices, and it gets relatively easier to keep making wrong ones. Make a series of right choices, and boy, you are setting yourself up for a fulfilling day. Of course, right and wrong choices mean different things to different people and I'm not heavy on their definitions here. Regardless of their meanings, it helps to visualize any important choice you have as an opportunity to enlarge your circle and improve the wellness of your day. Also, this extends beyond the scope of your day because this is how habits are formed—layers upon layers of choices that accumulate to form life and living patterns. If they were the right choices, you have yourself a good habit. And if they weren't, well, it's called a bad habit.
So, dear friend, try to start out your day or week or year or life by making the right decisions. It's easier to continue moving in a direction than changing it. Yes, it takes some effort to get going at the start but it gets easier. Keep adding extra bodies to the circle by making the right choices. And at the end of your day or week or year or life, you'd have formed a big circle like your mother's cooking pot.
Fin.
P.S:
I think we pedestalize circles a lot compared to other geometric shapes, and those shapes might feel jealous or unwanted. I think Circles receive a lot of attention. We sing the Circle of Life not the Triangle of Existence. As kids, we formed circles in the shape of cooking pots not rectangles in the shape of whiteboards or blackboards. Circles even have a positive connotation unlike other shapes—we circle correct answers, we don't square them; we call curves smooth and edges rough. It can't be helped, of course. I just thought it'd be nice to lend a voice in solidarity with non-circular geometric shapes—I see you all, and I stand with you!
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Write you soon, merci !
- Wolemercy