When failure succeeds
Recently we got a new TV. With it came a remote. Then we decided we needed a new receiver and a DVD player because our old ones weren’t good enough. Both of them came with their own respective remotes.
I am not one who loves technology. Although I must admit our new TV looks pretty cool, I really didn’t want to have to remember which remote belongs to which appliance. And so for a couple weeks I relied on my brother to start up movies.
But eventually I learned, and I no longer needed my brother’s assistance. However, he still had to help the other members of my family, even after we had had the TV for a few months. Now that I had the remotes all figured out I didn’t understand what was so hard about them.
But then I came upon an article that said that some people have the talent to prevent themselves from learning tasks they don’t want to. I thought this explained a lot. For example, I now understood how some people in my acquaintance have always managed to get out of doing simple chores. All one has to do is to ask so many questions, someone else does the unwanted task out of exasperation.
So really, the case might be that my family just doesn’t want to know how to tell the remotes apart. It is, after all, easier to let someone else do it for you. Or maybe my family is just an expert at being willfully incompetent.
— Avanti Chajed