April Fool No More…A Sign of Transformation!
So my college-aged cousin decided to play an April Fool’s joke on me. I received an instant message from her saying that she had just dropped out of her classes, that she hates them and that she’ll never be a good student. She said that she would tell her parents in the morning that she was just going to work at Rite Aid full-time.
As I felt a flash of anger, I had various thoughts racing through my head:
(1) Shall I play therapist and get her to reconsider her options?
(2) Inquire as to why she dropped out of the classes.
(3) Chastise her.
(4) Give her a lecture on what she would lose out on.
Instead of acting on these thoughts immediately, I asked a few questions about the whole situation so that I could understand a little more. I finally said, “Well, you could probably get a better job somewhere other than at Rite Aid and make more money”. I literally had no agenda one way or another about making her stay in school. Not having an agenda and not judging her for her “decision” allowed me to see my automatic ideas and thoughts about the importance of school and societal hierarchies come up. It was wild.
Then she got fed up and said to me, “Madhuanna! (”-anna” is a term used for elder brother in Telugu, my family’s native tongue)…Why are you making this so HARD? I thought you would get fooled!”
The ironic thing is this: I was fooled, but I didn’t have any sort of reaction like she was expecting, which I imagine was one of anger, exasperation or pleading. I just took her news in stride and didn’t react to it at all. Before Transformation I most likely would have gotten upset and tried to convince her not to leave school. I would have judged her for the apparent “choices” that she was making. Even though it was a joke, what I noticed was the huge difference in the way that I handled the conversation. Another one of the many benefits of Transformation…not being provoked into a reaction!
-B. Madhusudan
