Being anxious is the new normal
Being in foreign land, not much phone calls
from friends and families, no irritating heart beat increasing news channels
and taking some time off from the FB, twitter can give space for the natural
emotions to flow out!
I live in 120 sqft room which has used every
sqft to the best possible extent. So, even if I have stretched my arms; I
should do it in a specified position or I risk breaking something or hurting
myself.
I am staying in various European hotels from
last 5 + years and I find that the present room size is the new normal size in
most of the hotels in Europe. Presently, I am staying in a small town called Eskilstuna
from last one week and due to work schedules; I never got a change to sit
beside the window and watch outside for long duration. Anyways, no company will pay me
for this doing this task of sitting beside window and looking outside :-P
Today morning,
I opened my window and saw a wonderful sight. I felt the same sight to be more peaceful and serene today than yesterday. It is surely the effect of
mind, time on hand and old Kannada songs playing in the background.
When I started noticing the scene from the
window, I could see 2 fisherman on opposite sides of the river bank, a family
of 4 cycling in the bicycle lane, a dog owner taking his dog out (or vice versa
;-)) and obviously few cars in the road.
There is one river and different pace of life
beside the river bank.
2 fisherman who is presently stationary in
relative motion to the flowing river.
1 dog and its owner walking along the river
bank
1 family of 4 cycling along the river bank
Lots of people going in the car and most of
them who don’t even have time to look at river side
If I
start equating or matching this with the life style of an average IT
professional from India, we are obviously in the fast lane of that road along the
river bank. If there is no fast lane, we think it’s our right to have one and
we shall demand it. :-P
Looking at lifestyle of todays “normal” IT professional;
I can say that
“Being anxious is the new normal”.
World is like a river running in slow pace with
undercurrents here and there, rapids during the rocky course and carrying so
many things like fish, plants, debris along with it.
If IT professional (we)
choose to run in 12 km/hr speed along its river bank, why blame the world for
burning us out?
We can sit, walk, run, drive or cycle on the
river bank. But, we choose to run a 100 meter dash and have not
stopped till now.
A 100mtr race is good, if we started at 0 and decelerated
by 110th or 120th meter. If we continue to run in same
speed along the river bank; due to relative motion; its obvious that world
looks like a 100 mtr dash race.
Before the
adrenaline is finished or the knees starting paining badly, we need to stop
this race which is pursued for too long even after crossing the milestone.
Have you ever seen a marathon runner running like
Usain bolt?
Like it or not, Life is like a marathon.
The
greatest run in this life is not just measured by speed, time but its those
moments of life while running which would allow you to see how wonderful your life is. It doesn’t
come by running at same tempo or speed; it comes by choosing our own tempo
according to the course of the river.
I take the example of 3 animals – deer,
elephant and tortoise to illustrate this further.
Life doesn’t demand a fast deer; it appreciates
a majestic elephant or even a slow tortoise!
You might ask, Why?
Deer run in fear, deer run for saving its life most
of times! The day the deer loses even 1 step while running, it would become a
food for the carnivores. There is very
little room for error here, mistakes are costly!
Elephants tend to take time, walk at their own
pace. Compared to their body size, their eyes are quite small. Maybe they don’t
care much about everything minute around them and are happy with the visual
information received through their small eyes.
Tortoise has a hard shell on the top to protect
itself from the vagaries of the external environment and it seldom prefers to
walk or swim. It has adapted to sea, river, lake and even our well ;-)
It’s of no surprise that this
animal has the longest life span among all living species.
 |
| Deer in Concrete jungle Art by Roberto Foz |
Today, most of us are the deer in this concrete
jungle. We are bowled over by the benefits of being a deer, but failed to
evaluate the risks of aping it.
Being deer in this capitalistic world is like
being a chicken for the KFC.
You are fed well, sometimes force fed so that you
can perform for their KPI’s. You can be successful (according to amma appa,
uncle aunty standards), rich and what not; but at the end of the day; you are
being chicken so that capitalistic creed can consume your greed or create one!
The capitalistic world is feeding you with
house, car, loans, foreign tours etc where as its sucking out your creativity,
energy and
most importantly,
YOUR LIFE.
You will have time and enough content to
discuss in 1~2 hr meeting with your onsite/offshore colleague but nothing much
to talk for more than 20 mins with your friends, family and so on.
You will have enough space in calendar to accommodate
a client meeting in the evening but will find reasons to skip the reception of
your engineering/school batch mate since the event is happening on the other
side of the city.
You will have enough consciousness to attend
scores of team dinner and outings but will always postpone your family trips
since you are saving for a top end model upgrade of your car.
You might be saying “Boss, team dinners or
outings are free/company paid; therefore I go to relax, unwind and connect with team”.
Yes, agreed. That capitalistic world has
indirectly set a standard inside you that a holiday means spending time in
Coorg Club Cabana or some expensive resort. So, the reason for postponing the family outings since we have set some unwanted standards for family outings !
Recollect the childhood days ; everyone of us used to have regular family dinner in Bengaluru. Where would your dad take you out? Was it
Windsor Manor or Holiday Inn
or
Hotel Kamat, Hotel Swathi ?
Today, a team dinner should be in one of
the fine dining restaurants and bill should be huge enough so that I can go tomorrow
and brag about the dinner, bill and new theme restaurant and so on!
Oh I forgot! There should be some cool pictures
for FB too :-P
This has put pressure on your status that you can no longer eat out at so called medium scale service restaurants or you might call them as darshini's now !
The point is, by attending so-called team building(bitching) activities on
regular basis in your office, we get anxious if we have our family dinner @ Shanti Sagar or
spend a vacation in Coorg in some lodge! We cant brag about staying in Hotel
Mahendra @ Coorg to anyone, you see ;-)
Leave that topic! these days we get anxious or make the to-be bride and
groom anxious if they cant have a honeymoon at Bali, Maldives and so on!
We get anxious if we are not adhering to the
new normal standards set by the society!
Don’t worry; even I am one of them. I would get
anxious if you don’t read and comment on this blog post ;-)
In this world which is like a river flowing
towards ocean/sea/another river, we can choose our life to run beside it, walk
along with it or just sit back and take a look at the pristine surroundings.
There is no need to get anxious and run like a
deer along its river bank !
As I finish this piece, I see that 2 fisherman
have caught enough fishes and pack their bags. I take my book and start typing
this post; so that I can live that moment and capture that feeling in my own
words.
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