I don’t understand the hurry of modern life. We’ve loaded ourselves with commitments. We spend 9 hours at work, 3 hours in commute, 7 hours in sleep. What have we been left with? 5 hours? And, if you take out time that goes into chores of daily personal and home maintenance, what’s left? 2-3 hours of personal time. No wonder we look forward so much for the weekend. We need time right, to enjoy what we’ve been so feverishly working for. So, when weekend comes, we don our finest clothes, visit the nearest pub, drink ourselves to glory, pull out our cameras, snap a few pictures, with ourselves in it, lest we feel that experience was never real.
But, is this how life is supposed to be? To live life on the weekends only? Why isn’t anyone questioning it? Why have we accepted life in this form? What choice do we have here?
That’s why there’s so much push around the world that, ‘you should love your job’. That way, you could avoid this feeling that life is happening only on the weekends. If we haven’t found that kind of a job, then it means, you didn’t search enough or search well, so the mistake is yours, in being unable to find one soul fulfilling job. But, no one tells us that soul fulfilling jobs are as rare as soul-mates.
How many people actually love their job? How many of them will enjoy spending 9 hours of coding an obscure software that god only knows who uses, how many of them will enjoy filing tax returns day-in and day-out? Sisyphean chore. This is precisely why we dread Monday mornings. Because we know, though our conscious mind refuses to acknowledge, that we are just yet, another brick in the wall.
Yes, modernity was supposed to alleviate the problems that plagued human kind. And, I’m in no means ungrateful. I know how technology has made life easy on many accounts. But, these extravaganzas were supposed to free our time too. So, that we could invest that time in activities of our own choice and interest. So, that we could, could spend that time idling, sitting in the fields, soaking-in the sun, watching the clouds drift by, getting drenched in the rain, reading the great minds of yore, contemplating the meaning of human existence, trying to understand the human condition, creating, raising children with character and contributing to community.
“You can/should do all that, while working a 9 hour job”, is the biggest lie we’ve gobbled up.
Is there a wonder why mental illness is on the rise? We are told, there’s yet another thing that we can pine for, that’ll make our life easy, free, if only you could get that. But, there’s a price for everything, both in terms of money and in time. And, how much time and money are we willing to part with, for the newest trinket?
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
For most of us the answer is no. But, our ego doesn’t let us accept that. It rebels. It tells us, surely, happiness, peace, contentment is right around the corner, in the new iPhone, in the new dress, in the next promotion. So, we try to catch the carrot dangling in front of us.
But, reality catches onto us. It breaks through from time to time. A profound emptiness engulfs our life. Our eyes belie an empty stare.
Unless your job is the work for which you are born for, you are better served in asking what’s wrong with this system?
All this, on top of the absurdity of life and human existence. A double whammy. Albert Camus agreed life was a Sisyphean chore. But, he said, one should imagine Sisyphus happy. That living in the face of the absurdity of life is the true rebellion. But, the delusion of modern corporate/industrial lifestyle only exacerbates the emptiness of life.
Then, what is the answer? If jobs cannot fulfill our need for meaning, if money doesn’t buy us fulfillment, if more doesn’t make us happy, what do we need do?
- Say Enough. Simplify your lifestyle. Cut down on commitments. It is the only way you’d be able to free enough time to do something meaningful.
- Connect with Nature. Spend time in nature. Watch the sunrise. Watch the stars in the night. Walk bare-feet on the grass. Take a dip in the lake. Go for a hike.
- Unplug from the world. Realize the Joy of Missing out. There’s a release in knowing we don’t have to be ‘in the know’ to be relevant.
- Create with your hands. Be it a garden, a painting, a photograph, an article, a piece of cloth, a pot of clay. Create with your hands. Mould the clay, dig the earth, smell the paint, chew the pencil. Get real.
- Read and contemplate.
The answer to a fulfilled life, perhaps, lies not in more engagement, not in breadth but in depth.
Reply