Word Watch – Have To

Word Watch is an ongoing series where I look into ways the words we use transmit cultural ideas that we may not agree with. What we say matters. Say what you mean and mean what you say!

This installment of Word Watch is also a Rewind. You may have seen this post previously at my now defunct blog Right to Bleed. If so, skip on by or enjoy reading it again.

Have To

How often do you say that you “have to” do something? You have to go to work. You have to pay the bills. You have to call your mother. You have to clean the house. We use this little phrase constantly. It’s such a tiny phrase, but it has great, big implications!

The message behind “have to” is that you don’t have a choice. The choice has already been made for you, and your actions are inevitable. What a sad dismissal of our ability to choose the direction of our own lives!

For each of our actions, we make choices about what we want and what we think will benefit us. You don’t have to clean the house. You may want to clean the house, so that the house will look the way you like. You choose to clean the house, in order to get what you want. Shifting our thoughts from have to into want to and choose to, can turn a previously cumbersome action into one of satisfaction. On one hand might be the drudgery of having to pay the bills. But a tiny shift in the language brings about the delight of choosing to have electricity. It’s a little thing, but the way we talk to ourselves matters in the way we think about ourselves and our situations.

Of course the other issue is just that “have to” usually isn’t true. You don’t have to pay your bills, live in a house, or own a car. You don’t have to pay taxes. You don’t have to clean your house. You don’t even have to call your mother, which I can attest to, since I haven’t spoken to mine in 7 years or so.

Now, you may want to call your mother, of course, but if so, then say that!

Marshall Rosenberg talks about “have to” in Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (NVC). He tells a couple of stories that spotlight the issues rather well.

In one, a woman tells Rosenberg that there are certain things you just have to do. When he asks for an example, she mentions cooking dinner for her family. While she hates doing it, she says she has to, and has been faithfully doing it for years. After digesting Rosenburg’s lessons on language, she goes home and declares to her family that she will no longer be cooking dinner. Rosenberg later has a chance to ask her sons what they think of this new development. They were delighted that their mother would no longer be bitching and complaining through every meal!

In another story, a teacher says she hates giving grades because she doesn’t think they’re helpful to the students, but has to do it because it’s her school policy. Rosenberg encourages her to phrase it in the NVC way: “I choose to give grades because I want…” She replies that she chooses to give grades because she wants to keep her job. She says, “But I don’t like saying it that way. It makes me feel so responsible for what I’m doing.”

Ah yes. I personally think it’s sad to give up our autonomy with this little phrase, but that’s exactly what can be so alluring about it. We don’t have to take responsibility for our actions if we can use a “have to” to push the responsibility off on someone or something else.

We don’t do ourselves any favors with this, though. It simply obscures the other actions we could take to alleviate our troubles. I spent years thinking I had to pay my bills, which kept me from finding other solutions I turned out to be wonderfully happy with. And we don’t do others any favors with it, either. Like the cooking-hating mother, the other people in our life would probably be more happy with us if we were happy with our choices.

As you start to notice the “have to’s” in your life, some of them will give you a light bulb moment: I’m never doing that again, and this is what I’ll do instead! Some of them will give you a shift in how you feel about the action: I don’t have to do it, but I want to, and here’s why. Either way, you’ll find yourself a lot happier without all those little have to’s.

Tags: Marshall Rosenburg, NVC, Word Watch