Sometimes the price that you pay outweighs the benefits you get in return. The 18-hour work for extra dollars and the 3-hour internet searching for coupons and discounts for saving a few pounds belong to this category. We plan exotic trips to god-forsaken places but the long flight journeys, visa issues, and poor accommodation make the fancy beach and unique flora and fauna pointless. The promotion might be good but sadly the trading off of family and personal time might not be.
Forcing
People often force their worst personality traits onto others. If they are liars then they demand you to tell a degrading lie on their behalf to others. For instance, a friend goes on an exotic and enjoyable trip and then portrays it as work stuff and make you a part of their lie when he/she needs convincing it to boss or partner, to give a simple enough example.
Our loyalty and friendship then are dependent on us mirroring and adapting to his/her bad personalities.
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.
Talking
Everybody is shy to start a conversation but everyone wants to talk. People find it awkward, embarrassing, and weird to initiate a chat. Hence they won’t make the first move and simply wait and expect that the other guy understands this. But the others too think alike and in the end, only silence is shared. Avoid this and by all means, you take the so-called initiative, the train/flight/bus journey for the rest of the time will be at least exciting and entertaining, if not enriching. And you might learn something about something. You never know where the wisdom that you need at that point in your life comes from.
Improvement
One of the best tips I ever got is don’t reject what is already working. If reading a physical book is fine for you then don’t go for kindle or playbooks, no matter how cool they are projected to be, for the sake of upgrading your reading.
The mobile in your pocket can do everything you want. Wake you up at 5 A.M., play your playlist, make a call for you, screen videos, and take amazing pictures of your face. There’s no need of changing it. You are not missing out.
If you can do silent meditation then there’s no need for a Headspace subscription. I see people constantly changing pens to write even though they liked the previous ones. Why abandon something when it’s doing the job for you? Why update when there are no bugs?
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.
Life and Meaning
At some point in our lives, probably after a tragedy or so, for at least a brief moment, one stops and asks the damn question- What is the meaning of this life? Our consciousness somehow cannot fathom this wonderful existence without a grand purpose behind it. Maybe because we never trust someone especially when they give a free gift like life here without scheming something fishy. We always expect something in return when one does charity, despite what people say. Help always demands acknowledgment even if it is a humble thank you but how can god or someone up above give away something precious away freely or with a massive discount like in a china shop to us? The ego’s suspicion expects a solid answer for all this.
Speaking strictly from egoism, life is neither a blessing nor a charity given by someone. We are part of creation that somehow for some wild reason developed metacognition and consciousness that developed a fragile ego that could for a brief moment in time separate itself through an illusion and think that it is different and great. For the existence, we are in no way different from an asteroid moving randomly in space.
Arthur Schopenhauer for this exact reason warned us not to enquire about meaning in life, as it leads to disillusionment as everything in life and everything we value is transitory and vanishes away like a soap bubble as soon as we try to grasp and grab it.
It is correct. As long as we are slaves to time, change, and decay. It is not worth it. And moreover, what does one do even if he or she knows the purpose and meaning of his/her life? We get satisfaction and die. Hence we just long for satisfaction which roughly translates to the release of chemicals in the brain. How is it different from the satisfaction we get after watching a TikTok video or a YouTube short?
In short, one should not waste this brief time on earth over this useless question when it is nothing but ego playing a trick on us for mere chemical reactions.
Change
Heraclitus, an ancient greek philosopher commented that life is always in flux. He was simply pointing out that nothing
is permanent in life. In other words, this too shall pass. Marcus Aurelius too in Meditations noted that everything is
destined to change, to be transformed so that new things are born. The wheel moves is what the wise have noted.
But, yes there is a but to almost everything. As people age, they seldom welcome change. The older we get, the more stubborn we become. Everything is about ego when the bald head and bottomed belly kick in. When someone targets our political party, we target them. If some random teenager mocks your favorite movie, then you are ready for a fight. In fact, a lot of us become conservative and believe superstitions, stupid medicines, and rumors that even tabloids are envious of. As we age, our ability to welcome change with open hands decreases. At least, we should be able to acknowledge this.
Life is impersonal
The fates neither favor you nor fight against you is the lesson that I learned very late. We don’t know why
a 7-year-old girl gets an inoperable brain tumor whereas a 56-year-old rapist walks away scot-free. A man or woman wins 3-4 consecutive million dollars lottery while the man or woman next to them lives in a gutter living on a state pension or charity of Insta-celebrities.
It is what it is. No one is cursing or blessing up above. In fact, what the other planets did so as to not have life and what earth did so as to have life in terms of karma/prayers is a big existential question. This whole universe is
a cold system operated on chaos and randomness. It is not cruel, it is plainly objective and has no intention either
to give a gift or take away one. Neither happy nor sad endings.
Thy Vox 