Go slow. Reduce the pace.
The only thing you are rushing towards is death. Nothing will change that.
The speedy showers, hasty dressing up, and the gulping down of coffee to save microseconds won’t matter in the end. Take a chill pill.
Thoughts
The more we live in our heads, the more reality gets twisted and frightens us. Practicing presence and mindfulness helps us witness a less scary and terrifying world. We feel much lighter if we can leave the mind world for a bit. Treat your mind like a gym where you need to go to do some work and after that leave it and lock the damn door.
Mind chatter and your pampering of it trap you and create problems that never existed in the first place.
Aging
As we accumulate grey hair, we should also get multiple interests/hobbies/likings/things we love to do/engagements/pastimes/fancy amusements to make life more interesting, or else couch sitting or armchair thinking will surely prepone death and dullness. If you are passionate about music/poetry/movies/old coins/stamps/documentaries/books or anything else of that sort by 60-70 and do something about them then surely life will have more vigor and passion.
Else we are lost in the gossip of the neighborhood, meaningless political debates, and involved way too much in the lives of grandkids.
Distance
Closeness is always dangerous and threatening for people. The fantasies, mirages, and appearances that they created will falter and break away when there is less gap. That’s why we are scared of love and avoid intimacy with friends and partners. And being distant from everybody, for this reason, calls for an inauthentic living, lies, and fake lifestyles. This eventually creates a distance within yourself with yourself and alienates you from a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Being tightly knitted is chilling but it is honest and perhaps simple.
Goodness
Nature is never good. The tsunami and earthquakes don’t bother about the lives they take away nor does the cyclone care about the crops it damages which puts hundreds of families in misery. Likewise, the lion doesn’t pity over the life of a deer baby. It hunts mercilessly and eats belly-full. In fact, the viruses and bacteria families kill millions of humans every year, and not even kids are spared. We never judge and question the character of nature. However, humans are judged left and right and are given the highest form of judgement.
Architecture
How people build houses, what they put in them, and what colors they use reveal a lot about their personalities. The artistic decorations or the minimalistic styles show what kind of lifestyle they choose. Likewise how they organize space, arrange toys, and clean windows show the importance they give to the details. The green-minded ones putting plants, the film geeks displaying classic movies, and other such bizarre tastes tell the stories of people. The things we own reveal what we are. For instance, a person having a great audio setup at home or vintage paintings convey their hobbies and the balcony chairs exhibit the philosophical bent of the people living there. The smell, the marks on the floor, and the dining table all give clues about the individualities and their preferences. Next time when you visit someone’s house, try to pick the life they created in these items. of course, this is not to judge but to better understand them.
Plans
Jiddu Krishnamurti in his work “The book of life” remarks that reality is simple but escapism is complicated. The boring day is pretty normal with coffee sipping, book reading, and sleeping on the couch. However, we won’t let that happen. We won’t let simplicity flow into our lives. The escapism we seek on Sundays further exhausts us. The constant screen switching, partying, surfing everything on the internet, traveling to mosquito-ridden places, and shopping don’t give space for relaxation that we hanker. These weekend plans are so complicated that in the end, we have to figure out what exactly made us happy and if not, carry on the dissatisfaction to Monday. Neither body nor mind is well rested.
Putting aside these weekends, in real life too, the book, walking in the park, conversations with loved ones, cooking and eating tummy-happy foods, and ending with the reflection on life are far better than the above-mentioned list.
Necessity
Friedrich Nietzsche in “Twilight of the idols” says that he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. We can apply this on a micro scale to reframe our goals and achieve at least a few of them. Post planning an action, whether it is going to the gym, writing, blogging, podcasting, painting, or building, we need to sit down and ask why we need to do a particular thing. Why should I save the money instead of buying the overpriced t-shirt? It might seem obvious but actually, it is not. If we don’t have any particular reason behind what we are doing, we might easily get influenced by great marketing or fall prey to poor pieces of advice.
New year resolutions like journaling and meditation too fall away after a week as they are not necessities for you. You could have simply wanted it as it is the new cool thing or read it in a newspaper. The consistent action that we demand from the body and mind also demands a consistent answer from you. My friend recently said he wanted to do cycling and bought a decent bike from Decathlon. After 3 days, he decided it quit as it was not “his type”. Likewise, why should you start a business? Is it for the freedom that money gives or Is it really bringing value to people or Is it something else?
The recent trend is complaining about the rat race of 9-5 jobs. However, If asked why people wanted to quit then many find it hard to give a solid answer except for the usual workload, creativity, fun, boss issues, and EMI answers. Having clarity on the “Why” gives you not just strength but also keeps away a lot of mental trash and negativity that you perceive from doing a task, either through conditioning or unconscious reasoning.
Fear
One of the biggest negative things about fear is it makes you blind to all the opportunities that are available to you at the moment. In fact, the solution in the form of a great job or money or person could be right in front of you and we may never grab it to pull ourselves out of misery. And also obviously, this limits our circle of experience and the actions we take daily. Without fear we see life with floodlights and with fear we look at it with a flashlight.
Thy Vox 