Be Happy, Always by Xandria Ooi

Author:Xandria Ooi [Ooi, Xandria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642500400
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2019-07-11T13:19:17+00:00

When You Care Whose Fault It Is, You Cannot Be Happy

<Understanding>

When something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, who is at fault?

Are you at fault? Is the other person at fault? Or is circumstance at fault?

We usually think that we must know whose fault it is so that the person can take responsibility for fixing it, but the truth is, even when someone is responsible for causing a mess, for breaking our heart, for not doing their job well…blaming them doesn’t mean they will take responsibility, and it certainly doesn’t solve the problem.

There is a renowned designer in Malaysia, Bernard Chandran, who has five beautiful children with his wife Mary. They live in a magnificent home. Since Bernard works in fashion, he has impeccable taste in interior design and is a self-proclaimed neat freak. Whenever I visit their home at Christmas, I am blown away at how clean and sparkling every surface is. Their oldest son, Teri, went off to study in the United States, where he resided off campus with a few housemates.

“How is it, being away from home?” I asked him. “Must be exciting!”

“Yes, it’s pretty great, but I don’t like the living situation with my housemates. I can’t stand being in the house! It’s so dirty!” he shuddered.

His mom, who was sitting next to him, laughed.

“Don’t you guys have a cleaning schedule?” I asked, not at all surprised by his distress at the lack of hygiene. It had to be hard to adjust to any place that was less than spic-and-span after being used to his parents’ remarkably clean house.

“Yes, we do! But they don’t clean when it’s their turn! The toilet is absolutely disgusting!”

“Have you talked to your housemates about it? Maybe you can stress the whole hygiene thing?”

“I tried talking to them, but it doesn’t work. They still don’t clean because they don’t see it as a problem at all.”

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“So I have to clean the toilet all the time, because I can’t even look at the toilet bowl in that state, much less use it.” He said, looking terribly resigned, yet surprisingly accepting for someone who had to keep cleaning the toilet that everyone was using.

At this point, his mom quipped, “I told him that if he wants to use a clean toilet, then he should just clean it himself! It doesn’t matter that it’s a shared toilet. He’ll feel more miserable always waiting for them to clean it than if he just cleaned it himself.”

No one could argue with that logic! I loved how Mary wasn’t jumping to defend her son on how unfair the whole situation was, but rather simply let him know that in life, you are responsible for your own happiness—and your own clean toilet.

So many of us have been in similar positions. Things are not fair, and we have to pick up the slack.

If you were in Teri’s shoes, there would be a few options on what you could do. If you chose to continue

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