I want to.

I want to fail, to drown, to accept failure, and still learn to live my life

I want to not win the race, slow down, take a nap in between, and maybe go a different way

I want to stop comparing, stop accessing, stop treating everyone like an arch rival

I want to stop believing that I have to be the best at everything, and rejoice in my mediocrity

I want to be comfortable as I am, and stop thinking for a moment who I should be

I want to stop feeling guilty for making mistakes, stop the regrets for the wrong decisions

I want to stop living in “what ifs” and start loving the “this is it”

I want to stop asking “how much more” and start celebrating “look how far”.

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Minimalism

I recently watched a documentary on Netflix about minimalism, how leading a minimalistic life, i.e. living only with the things that give us happiness or something that we truly need to function, can help us in living a happy and successful life. It talked about how we often buy things just because we have this false need of validation that owning that particular thing will make us happy, or sometimes it’s just because we compare the things that we own with others, thus always trying to fill a void with useless garbage, but not realising that the void is always going to keep asking for more (it’s a black hole :|). It was very motivating and inspiring, and I ended up cleaning out some old stuffed toys from my parent’s showcase, that I had received as birthday gifts when I was a teenager. But this post is not about how to clean up your house or your closet. It is about cleaning up your mind.

Agreed that living with minimal things is satisfactory. But what about all the extra noise that we keep hoarding up in our minds? Signing up ourselves for infinite activities and bearing the burden of not being able to do them? Along with materialistic things, also craving for all the experiences that others are experiencing and feeling that doing that would make us happy?

I see a new book, I put it in my TBR list. That list keeps on getting bigger and I know I am never going to read them all, and yet I don’t stop. Watching that list only gives me anxiety and I have actually lost the names of the books I actually want to read in that junk. Same goes for trying to watch all the movies and shows, that I have been told are the most amazing piece of content ever created. I am sure they are. But do I want to watch everything, or can I even? The same way where we keep buying useless things to impress others, we keep on reading or watching things we don’t want to just to impress others or to get some sense of achievement, but the list never ends.

If that wasn’t enough, there comes travel. This earth is never going to fall short of the places where one can go to blow off some steam. And someone or the other is always going to go to places that you have not been to, and you will always keep craving for that, for more. More often than not, this craving is just out of FOMO and not because you actually want to see so and so place.

Along with that, there’s a crazy need for trying to excel in so many things, trying this out, trying that out, burning ourselves out. It’s good to be ambitious but it’s also good to know when to stop. And it’s best to realise which things actually make you happy, and not go crazy while juggling between activities because if you keep your foot on many boats, you are just going to fall down.

Minimalism goes a long way. I am not sure how ready I am to throw away many things that I own yet, but maybe I can throw away some items from my To-do list and get some peace!

Going somewhere?

Going somewhere? Out of breath? Life, never stopping to take a breath, or let us take a breath. No time to calm down. You have to keep moving if you want to make it big. If you are doing something, it makes you angry, you want to stop, but not doing anything makes you even angrier and you surround yourself with work and responsibilities that are sometimes way out of your league. But you stay adamant, you want to prove your worth. Because if you don’t, then you would be looked down upon, or so you think. You keep slogging, every day, work to home, home to work. But are you trying to get somewhere? You have no idea where to go. You are just moving, just like everyone around you is moving. You want a big shiny car, a brand new apartment, but too afraid to take the big leap, aren’t you? You want to move to a better country, and still not sure what for. You want to go to that dream destination that everyone keeps talking about, but you actually wish to go to the confines of your hometown. Because trips are more stressful than stress relieving. But maybe that is because we want to visit every single place lest we miss out on something good. You go to the gym, not for staying healthy but just to get a better body. But this pressure of getting a better body is making you eat more and worse, isn’t it? You want to read that book on your nightstand, but cannot keep the laptop down. One more episode, and eventually you fall asleep. The book still left untouched, getting dustier. Sleeping late, waking up later. Cancelling plans because going out takes too much of you. Then cribbing that life is boring and monotonous. You don’t want to drink or smoke every other day, but the loneliness of the home seems worse than the hangover and the derailing body. And you cannot stop. FOMO. Your biggest enemy. Stressing over something that hasn’t even happened but you are afraid you will miss it. Spoiling something fun you were already a part of in the process. You complain that everyone else is happy. And one fine day you wake up and are mature enough to realize no one actually is. And this weird unhappy world gives you a little bit of contentment and motivation. You start learning how to live happily with this unhappiness and lack of purpose in life. You learn to live in the moment because you realize most of the parties are blurry and the same anyway. Learning how to keep promises, and not cancelling at the last moment, because people are better at listening than the walls. You start sleeping on time, even if not waking up yet. The more the sleep, the merrier the day is. You take out time to read, even 10 pages would do. You learn how to workout and eat, because atleast the scale still shows the same number. And the workouts are pretty fun. Taking the trips slow, enjoying rather than hurrying. Still not sure what to do with your life, still over-burdened at work. But life seems better, atleast you are happier. Calmer. You learn how to leave office in office, unwind and sleep.
Life might be getting to you right now, but you will get there, bit by bit 🙂

Work life balance?

I just finished reading a book about an office Christmas party and how that one night changed the lives of a lot of people. It was a kind of story that could easily be made into a chick flick, something that I would love to watch with my girl friends. But the feeling that I was left with at the end of the book was something totally different. The story revolved around different people in a big oil company, and the families of those people, how the wives of big corporate tycoons were left alone in their marriage because their husbands were too busy climbing up the big corporate ladder, even if a man could see that his marriage was falling apart, his job came first. Though this mostly surrounded married men in their 50s and 60s, I couldn’t deny the fact that most of our generation is heading towards a life like that, where our jobs come before everything else.

I have been in the job industry for around 1.5 years. I have a lot of friends around, we have fun, we party. Even the people in my office are very fun loving and I hang out with them as well. All my weekends are spent lazing around at home, doing nothing at all. But I won’t deny that I am constantly worried about work. I am never at peace even during the weekend, while I am on a trip, even when I am visiting my parents. Every Friday I leave office at a decent time, promising myself that I will finish the pending work over the weekend. There is no deadline that my manager has given me, there is absolutely no rush, but I have burdened myself with all this pressure that when I am not doing anything related to work, or working on the skills that are required for work, I start feeling guilty. If someone asks me to go out during the day on Saturday, my first feeling is that I have a lot of work. But there is no justification of what work I have or how that is even important.

This is my state when I am just starting my career, with no responsibilities. I think that with this kind of mentality at this stage, I am just preparing myself for a future where I might put everything behind my job, and I couldn’t be more wrong. We always end up blaming our companies that we are burdened with so much work that there is no scope for a work life balance, but in this world with this cut throat competition, is there ever a chance? With so many aims and aspirations of excelling at everything that we do, and the hardwork that needs to reach that stage in life, can we ever find peace? Are we heading towards a future where we have no life?