Recently I became subject to stark humiliation in my workplace for a simple comment that I made. While having a casual discussion, I was asked about what I do after work and how good I am in managing household chores. Being a hippie at heart I don’t take things to my mind, I simply replied that “I don’t do much. I try to wrap up things early before bed. Actually, I need some ME – time every day. So, it’s kind of important that I spend some time with myself before hitting the sack” I felt that was a pretty good way of handling the question in real terms but to my surprise, I was given a volley of strange questions against it.
“What do you do when you spend time with yourself? Do you talk to yourself? Don’t you watch television when you are at home? How can someone spend time with oneself? How silly is that? Why don’t you cook food every day? Are you able to take care of your health and family? You must be in need of some time management ideas, isn’t it?” and lots more. Needless to say, that the questions came up with a lot of humiliating add-ons that made me low.
I was astounded by the shallow level of intellect and the fact that they were still living in long gone centuries where a female is supposed to take care of her family, cook food, watch television and sleep off. When they learned that I have started learning violin in my early thirties, they were stunned – “What is the use of a Violin in your life now?”
When they learned I love reading they felt it’s such a waste of time. “How does it matter what they wrote in their books?” I couldn’t even tell them that deep down I still want to be a writer someday.
Well, I had all the answers to their questions, but I didn’t feel it appropriate to explain things to them when I was annoyed. So, I dedicate this post to all of them and wish from the bottom of my heart that they understand what it actually means.
When I talk about some “ME” time, I mean the time we spend on introspecting. Simply put, thinking and scrutinizing about the things that are going on around us. Each one of us, no matter where we are and what we are doing, is, in a way, climbing mountains of our life. It can be the mountain of our professional life, our personal life, our relationships, our health, and the like. It basically means the various goals that we have in our lives and the way we work on their achievement. Our days are spent on climbing the mountains and being on the move, we are too occupied to identify whether we are on our destined track or not. We have a tremendous epidemic of ‘following the crowd’ these days. We tend to follow the people around and most of the time misunderstand their goals as ours. In a way, we end up chasing the dreams that others are dreaming and start believing that to be our dream. It happens. No matter how strange it sounds.
I have come across people who are brilliant in their creative crafts and still spend days and nights in a corporate office doing things that they were not meant for doing at all. Just because his batchmate opted for engineering, he simply got carried away by the fact and left his interest in literature to become a world-class engineer. Being made to do something else we end up following what others are doing and end up being an ordinary person when we were actually meant to be special. It is very important for each one of us to understand and chose the path that we are meant for. If our inner voice loves literature, we should follow that. If our inner voice wants us to be a chef, we should not spend our time working as a lawyer. It’s really that simple. We should focus on what we are actually meant to do.
Now the most important question that comes into the picture is that how do we know whether we are on track or not? That’s where the ‘Me’ - time comes into rescue. Until and unless we spend some time with ourselves focusing on what we are doing on daily basis and what we are meant to do, we don’t get to listen to this inner voice. Introspection is the only way out, Until and unless you spend time with yourself understanding and analyzing daily activities, you will keep doing the same thing every single day and at the end of your life you will realize that all these days, you have spent your time climbing the wrong mountain. There is nothing worse than that. After spending a lifetime of efforts, when you realize that you have been working for the wrong dream your success will not make sense to you because that was not what you wanted to be. So, you need to do some soul searching while climbing your mountains so that you don’t end up climbing somebody else’s mountain at the end of your life.
As an individual, you are supposed to do certain duties in your daily life but that doesn’t mean you will leave out in your interests. You should have a hobby to make you feel good about. If you like painting, you can always find out some time from your daily life to play with your canvas. Be rest assured, that will make you feel great. Such activities are known to improve your quality of life by giving you more of feel-good factors.
Reading gives your brain a different kind of workout than watching TV or listening to the radio. It is said -- Adults who spent their downtime doing creative or intellectual activities (like reading) had a 32 percent slower rate of cognitive decline later in life than those who did not. Research has shown that both listening to music and playing musical instrument stimulates our brain and increases our memory.
We all know that “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy”. The time has come that Jack realizes his mistake and spend some time sorting it out. Until and unless we wake up ourselves and do something about it our lives are going to be same old dead, dull and boring. So, it’s a request to all my serious friends, to not to take life so seriously and start living in the days. As it is rightly said by someone, “Don’t just add days to your life, add life to your days!”
That’s what the real Art of Living is.
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