Inheritance of Inaction

It’s 11 PM and I’m standing in front of my cupboard, staring at six white shirts that are all somehow the wrong white shirt for tomorrow’s meeting. One is too white. Two are not white enough. Three have that specific shade of white that says “I gave up in 2019 and nobody noticed.” I should iron one of them. I have an iron. It’s right there in the cupboard, looking at me with judgment. We have history, the iron and I. Mostly of me plugging it in with great intentions and then getting distracted by literally anything else, a notification, a thought, the existential dread of being someone who needs to iron shirts at 11 PM on a Tuesday.

I close the cupboard. I’ll wear a jacket tomorrow. Problem solved. This is what they don’t teach you in school, that adulthood is just an elaborate system of solving problems by creating slightly different problems. Jacket means I’ll sweat in the meeting. Sweating means I’ll be uncomfortable. Uncomfortable means I’ll be distracted. Distracted means I’ll miss something important. Missing something important means I’ll have to schedule a follow-up meeting. Follow-up meeting means another white shirt situation next week. The circle of life, except Elton John doesn’t sing about ironing.

My father irons his clothes every single day. Every. Single. Day. He wakes up at 6 AM, makes his tea, reads the newspaper, and then irons whatever he’s going to wear. Even on Sundays. Especially on Sundays. “Why?” I asked him once, watching him iron a shirt he was going to wear to sit at home and watch cricket. “Discipline,” he said, like he was training for a war against wrinkles. I nodded, but I was thinking: discipline for what? For whom? Who is coming to check if your Sunday home-shirt is ironed? Is there a wrinkle inspector I don’t know about? But I didn’t say this because I’ve learned that questioning your parents’ routines is like questioning gravity, pointless and you’ll just end up on the floor.

I don’t iron. I haven’t ironed anything in three years. I buy “non-iron” shirts, which is a lie, by the way. They should be called “less-iron” shirts or “eventually-iron” shirts or “you’re-fooling-yourself” shirts. But I buy them anyway because the lie is comfortable and comfort is underrated. My wife irons. She irons everything. Bedsheets. Bedsheets! Who irons bedsheets? “They look nice,” she says. They look exactly the same.

There’s this thing that happens when you grow up. Nobody tells you about it. You start becoming your parents, but only the parts you swore you’d never become. My father used to check if the gas stove was off before leaving the house. Not once. Three times. I’d roll my eyes so hard I could see my own brain. “It’s off, Dad. It’s been off. It will continue being off.” Now I check the gas stove four times before leaving. Four. Because three times is my father’s number and I need to be worse at something to feel like I’m still me.

I used to have this friend in college who never attended the 8 AM lectures. Never. His record was impeccable. Zero attendance in 8 AM slots for four years straight. We’d ask him how he did it. “I just don’t go,” he’d say, like it was the simplest thing in the world. And it was. It is. The simplest things are always the hardest to do. Not going is easy. Going is hard. Ironing is hard. Not ironing is easy. But somehow we’ve built this entire civilization on doing hard things and then feeling superior about it. “I woke up at 5 AM and went to the gym.” Congratulations, you’ve done something difficult that you’ll have to do again tomorrow. You haven’t solved anything. You’ve just upgraded your problems.

Last month, I bought a book on productivity. THE book on productivity. The one everyone swears by. The one that promises to change your life if you just follow these seven habits or twelve rules or whatever number they’ve decided is marketable. I read the first chapter. It told me to wake up early. I closed the book. Not because I don’t want to be productive. But because I know myself. I know that I’ll read the whole book, get very excited, make a detailed plan, buy a new notebook specifically for tracking my new productive life, use the notebook for four days, forget about it for three weeks, find it again while looking for something else, feel guilty, put it in a drawer, and then six months later see the book on my shelf and feel personally attacked by its existence.

My mother tells me, “You’re so smart, if only you applied yourself.” The great Indian parenting compliment-curse. You’re smart BUT. You’re capable BUT. You have potential BUT. The BUT is where Indian parents live. It’s their permanent residence. I’m 28 now, and I’ve realized that “applying yourself” is just a fancy way of saying “become someone else.” Someone who irons. Someone who wakes up at 5 AM. Someone who attends all meetings on time with ironed shirts and enthusiasm and life goals that fit on a vision board.

I’m wearing the wrinkled shirt. I’ve decided. I’m going to the meeting in a wrinkled shirt and if anyone notices, I’ll tell them I’m embracing authenticity. That wrinkles are natural. That perfection is a capitalist construct designed to sell irons and self-help books and vision boards. They won’t buy it, but I will have said it, and saying things makes them feel true for approximately seven seconds, which is enough time to sit down and start the meeting.

In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus writes about Sisyphus who pushes a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down, over and over, forever. And Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus happy. I think about this a lot. I think about how we’re all pushing boulders. Some of us are pushing ironed shirts. Some of us are pushing career goals. Some of us are pushing the idea that we’ll definitely start going to the gym next Monday. And the boulder always rolls back. The shirts wrinkle. The goals shift. Next Monday becomes next month. And we keep pushing because what else are we going to do? Stop? Stopping isn’t an option. Stopping is for people who’ve figured something out, and nobody’s figured anything out, they’re just better at pretending.

My father called yesterday. “How’s work?” he asked. “Good,” I said. “Are you taking care of yourself?” he asked. “Yes,” I lied. “Good,” he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice. The relief that his son is okay, is taking care of himself, is presumably ironing his shirts and waking up on time and doing all the things that indicate successful adulthood. I didn’t tell him about the cupboard situation. I didn’t tell him that I’m wearing wrinkled shirts to meetings and calling it authenticity. I didn’t tell him that I bought a productivity book and gave up on page twelve. Because what’s the point? He’ll worry. He’ll give advice. The advice will be correct. I’ll nod. I’ll forget. The cycle continues.

At this point in life, I’ve realized that we don’t actually inherit our parents’ discipline or their routines or their ability to iron shirts at 6 AM on a Sunday. We inherit their anxiety about not doing these things. We inherit the guilt of being the child who could have, should have, would have, if only we had applied ourselves. Every wrinkled shirt is just a small rebellion against an ironed future we were promised but never quite believed in. Every missed alarm is a tiny victory against a morning person we were supposed to become but never will.

In that regard, the cupboard full of wrinkled shirts isn’t a failure of discipline. It’s a monument to the life I’m actually living, as opposed to the life I’m supposed to be living. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe Sisyphus would have ironed his boulder if someone had asked him to. Maybe he was happy precisely because he didn’t.

Or maybe I’m just lazy and this is what lazy people tell themselves at 11 PM while staring at wrinkled shirts.

I’ll iron tomorrow. Probably. Maybe. Let’s see.