We invented a myriad of extra rules to enhance the game. If you had the exact same card as the one that was just played, you could play it and play resumes from your spot. Play three skips in a row, everyone draws a card. Three reverses in a row, everyone passes their hand to the left. If you throw a card to the pile and miss, you get your card back and lose your turn. Drop a green three and you got to try slapping the cards out of someone’s hand. During Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas, play a red following a green, proclaim Merry Christmas in any number of languages, and get rid of any card in your hand.

The most notable rule was that penalties accumulated. If someone plays a draw two on you, no problem—just play another draw two and the next sucker has to draw four. If she plays one, the next guy is drawing six. And so on. If it comes all the way back to you, your penalty doubles. After one guy played a draw four, he watched in horror as seven more were played as it came back to him, he found himself picking up 64 cards.

Green three!

Whenever we got stuck drawing a fist full of cards, my friend John was quick to remind the unlucky soul, “You don’t have to draw 32, you get to draw 32.”

He was right, you know. You didn’t have to draw. You could walk away, go back to work and get on with your day sans half the deck.

But we didn’t quit. Drawing cards was part of playing. Playing was what we wanted to do, even if that meant picking up 16 honey mustard stained cards off the floor.

We don’t do things because we have to. It might seem like we have to, but we don’t. My friend Jim pays taxes because he doesn’t want to go to jail. Teresa does the laundry because she enjoys clean clothes. Paul test his blood sugar and injects himself with insulin because his body and brain to function correctly. Matt has to brush his teeth if he doesn’t want them to fall out. Makeesha mentioned urinating. She’s right. But you don’t have to use the bathroom. Former NFL lineman Mark Schlereth used to pee his pants during games because he didn’t want to walk back to the locker room.

I tend to look at life as series of have-tos with a few get-tos dropped in here and there.

But it’s really not that way.

It’s mostly get-tos.

Maybe we think of them as have-tos because we forget why we’re doing them.

The two questions I can’t get away from and thus I ask you:

1. Are the things I see as have-tos getting me toward the things I want?

2. How can I make my have-tos and my get-tos line up more often?