Friday, June 4, 2010

The essence of 'Life'..

A post to collect all the thoughts which have been going through my mind a lot lately. Things I have pondered over. Things I keep thinking about. Things that I keep discussing with people. And things that I have wanted to write a post on for a long time.

Happiness went away on a greyhound bound for Georgia:

(The above is a line from a song :P)
It seems like ever since we've 'grown-up' happiness doesn't seem to stick around. And dissatisfaction has become more permanent since we've started with our jobs and have started earning money. And this is not just my opinion. I have really asked around and this was the general opinion. And reasons have also come up. The main reason being that we've stopped enjoying the small things. We've let go of the small joys and have started focusing on the big things. We've forgotten that it's actually the small things that bring life into our lives. We've unconsciously started running after money.. and tada... we do have money now.. (well to some extent.. at the end of every month.. before we spend it all... :$) and I thank Allah for that.. not that I dislike the concept of salaries.. but we've engrossed ourselves so much into "adulthood" we've lost all essence of life..
Remember the times when we went out for lunch/dinner with family/friends ONCE in a bluemoon. That was the time we enjoyed eating out. Now eating out has become a norm and eating-in has become .. well.. how do you put it.. not very interesting...??!!!
Remember the times when we used to rent movies over the weekend. That was when it was actually we fun. We still enjoy watching tv and movies.. but it has become a routine and hence, not that much interesting any more..
Remember the time when we used to read.. actually read books. When we became so much involved in the 'story-book' that we found ourselves IN the book. That stopped happening for me a long time ago. Now we all have so many other things going on in our minds that it has become impossible to detach ourselves from our real lives and enjoy being a part of the book.. Now every time I am reading a book something steals me away from it, more often than not it's my cell phone, with another forwarded message or sometimes a 'hi-hello' one from a friend.
A few months ago we had a company-sponsored training. The focus of the training was "Communication and Presentation Skills", but the trainer also mentioned a few things related to the topic of this post. She said back when we were children we were not afraid to try out new things. We enjoyed doing something new everyday. She also said to spend time with children, play with them. And she is right. When you are playing with children you are really having fun. And it was also advised to spend less time watching tv. There are other ways of relaxing. One activity which we should all carry out to realize the quality of our life was this: In one minute write down all the things that you enjoy. It seems that one minute would be less and you would have more things to write when the time's up, but that doesn't happen. In my case there was still time and I had nothing more to right. :| (I don't exactly remember the time allowed, maybe it was less than one minute, but I do remember that I was short of things to write. It was like sitting in an exam, writing answers you didn't prepare for.)

Now we are living a routine life.
We've stopped spending time with our families. If I give my example, I spend 9 hours of everyday in office, and when I come back I switch on my computer and start looking for things that I can watch that day. The only hours I spend with my family are the hours where there is no electricity and hence no TV, computer,... but even then I have my cell phone. Why do I feel it important to share jokes with my friends or talk to them but I don't categorize spending time with my family as important?

Lack of Confrontation:

Another thing which is actually sort of related to happiness is that we've started taking ourselves too seriously. (I know it's a quote, but couldn't find the reference. It goes something like ' Don't take yourself seriously, nobody else does. But it's a quite true).
We think we are just too important. We let our egos take the best of us.

As children when we used to have fights with our friends, the next day it was all better. Don't say that then it was on petty issues.. like who'll bring a ball the next day.. we still fight on small issues.. it's just that our priorities have changed. A ball seemed important then. We've changed our perspective of "what's important" now. And our perspectives are still quite wrong.

We've put up a image of ourselves for others so that they would like us. But inside, we are not that good.
Because inside we keep grudges,
because inside we hate others,
because inside we are jealous of others,
because from inside we are not happy,
because from inside we actually dislike our own existence.

These days we don't confront people. And for good reasons. :) We don't wanna fight in front of the whole wide world. So we refrain from that.. which is good. But we still keep grudges, we start ignoring others, we meet everyone with a smile, but no one should know what's going on in those little heads of ours.. because what goes on up there is not something everyone would like to know. We think it's our right to analyze people, and so we focus on all the bad things. We think it's right to criticize others and call it healthy criticism. We think it's right to judge others. We think it's right to be jealous of others, because we don't consider it jealousy, we consider it improving ourselves, bringing betterment in ourselves. Well, is that really true?


I think I have written enough. Comments are welcome. :)