Think what you did yesterday. Think what you are doing today. Think what you and I will do tomorrow. In many ways, all of us are doing the same thing every other day. We are locked into our predictable lives. Our way of work and play is locked into a predictable mode. We do the same things every day, and it looks as if you and I are on the treadmill of a running daily life. In rare moments, the treadmill slows down and at times it speeds up. All the time we hope for the pace we are used to, to resume. The moment it does, it’s business as usual.
The purpose of this piece today is to remind us—and maybe even jolt us—to jump out of the way we live. Are we focusing all the while on things we must not? Are we too focussed on the smaller issues? As we focus on small issues, are we forgetting the bigger ones? Are we outsourcing the focus on these larger issues to the governments that we mandate to govern us? In the bargain, do we miss the real issues for the not-so real?
Let me list a set of things that demand our focus, but don’t get enough of it, like for instance, air pollution. In the week gone by, I found myself coughing my way out of a smogged-up Delhi. The day I landed, the air quality index or AQI touched a dizzy high. Most of the day, as I ploughed my way through the fog, it remained at a hazardous level. I went through a ‘smogathon’ of my own. While I was fortunate enough to live in a cocoon of a hotel that assured me that the AQI within the premises was perfect, I pity all those breathing in air quality that is substandard.
I am told the AQI high represented us smoking 49 cigarettes in a day. Do we think of air pollution enough? Or do we just call it a seasonal hazard in Delhi and many parts of India during the winter months? Do we say “chalta hai”, and move on? I suspect we do. And this is just air pollution. Must we not be concerned about every other kind of pollution we create every day? Must we at least be louder than we are on this issue of pollution that affects all of us?
Let me leave the nasty issue of pollution for our governments to sort out. It’s their problem. Let me move on to talk about the issue of work. Many of us have stopped working with our hands altogether. Yes, our fingers do the work mostly. Many of us have forgotten how to fix a bulb in the house, hammer in a nail, dig up a garden, wash our clothes, cook, clean up utensils after a meal, and a zillion things we used to do in the past.
Today we are very proud to be working with our minds. Most of the work we do is using the mind. Yes, many work with their hands and feet on the ground and on factory shop floors, but this work is considered not so great. With more and more automation replacing hard work, we seem to love to do soft work. The softest work we do is with our minds. Are we getting just too soft? Must we then think and get more real? Must we pack a regimen of hard work with our hands and feet on the ground for ourselves? Is that going to change our perspective on work and its output? Are we just getting lazy? Are we working too much with the mind and too little with our hands?
Let me leave the nasty issue of hard work to those who work hard. Let me move on to the next big issue: mental health. Even as we plod our way through our working lives, we hear of break-downs and burnouts. We hear of people just losing it at the altar of hard work. We work with our minds. We know nothing else. Our bosses want our minds to work harder and harder. The hours are long and the work is mind-numbing. Just to compensate, we party hard. Work hard and party hard is the big ethos of the day.
Look at any city and town where we work with our minds. The biggest off-day entertainment of the young in India is alcohol and smoke. The clubs, pubs, and restaurants are beneficiaries of a whole society of young and hard-working people who reach out to these islands of fun that offer the temporary relief of good food, drink and the smoke.
Work in many of our new desk-bound work cultures leave us back with repetitive stress issues, back-ache, frozen shoulders, cervical issues and a whole host of new age desk-bound mind-work related issues. The mother of them all is the mental health issue that trouble each of us at some time or the other. While some acknowledge it, some prefer to drown it in a peg of dark alcoholic brew.
Let me leave the nasty issue of mental health aside for now. It’s more comfortable to do that. Let me talk about sleep. In the race to make our lives happen, sleep has been forgotten by many. I believe we are emerging to be a nation of sleep-deprived people. Many of the icons in our life have encouraged us to sleep less and work hard and party even harder. In the bargain, India sleeps less and less. Getting six hours of sleep a night is a luxury. We don’t seem to be too bothered about it as well.
Every mattress company has a sleep story to tell and sell. Every pillow has a story to tell as well. We don’t have one though. While we brag of our brand new car, our latest health-tracker app and more of such, we don’t have a brag-value story of sleep to tell.
Let me leave sleep aside. It’s so snoring. Let me talk about intimacy. Are we intimate enough with the ones we must be intimate with? Is there enough intimacy in our calm-deprived lives? Are we a bit too hurried? When did we do that picnic with a loved one last? When did we hold hands last? When did we look into one another’s’ eyes last? Never mind how old or young you are. When did we spend enough time on intimacy? Are we becoming more transactional and less intimate even in our personal lives? Ouch! That hurts. Let’s do a personal intimacy audit.
Let me leave all these things aside now as the limited and limiting words of my column are begging me to stop. Let me beg instead for your attention. Let’s sit up and think about the bigger issues for a change. At least for a day. Maybe just today for a start. Make a list of all the nice things we just don’t do that we ought to. A list that jolts us from the boredom of our own making. A list that gets us off the treadmill we have chosen to remain on. Let’s start now.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(Views are personal)