The Happiness Project | Day 2

As human beings, it is definitely important to be civil. We should be polite to people when we speak to them. But how often are we able to do it?

Over the years, toxic wastes that are not handled accumulate in relationships. We do not see their effects right then and there, but the cracks are already forming. And when they show, they are too ugly and we just can’t see how the people we knew could be that way.

I feel the best way to stay sane in life is to expand our horizons, to do a variety of things, to keep our brains involved in different things. When that does not happen, our minds think about the same things day in and day out, and we end up not only ruining our days, but for others as well.

People in suburbs and small towns face this lot more often than in big cities. Their lives are limited to their neighborhoods, their workplaces and the thoughts of making ends meet. For example, for my parents, their focus through the years that my brother and I were born and grew up, was to somehow hold the family together, manage the finances and ensure there was food on the table and education for the children. In the process, they forgot to explore their own likes and dislikes, forgot to explore who they were as people, what they liked to do for themselves, etc.

Now that both the children are away from home, they do have time on their hands, but not a variety of things to do. Eventually, they end up worrying about us, all the time. The phone conversations reflect that. The news reports they read have almost always to do with how people get killed in traffic or food adultery, and they parrot it to us so that we can be careful while walking on the road or while ordering food from outside.

None of this is bad. It is good to make your children aware of things that are important. But if the only news you feed them is of the negative things that are happening around the world, it does not really help much.

For the most part, I am myself quite negative about the states of affair of the human world. If I am being given some information, I would rather want it to be something positive that is happening around us. Our childhoods were amazing because when we read newspapers we would see amazing news of innovations in the worlds of science and technology. Those inspired us to become better than who were were, because they inspired us to be part of a world that we did not know.

Today, I am inspired very little. By myself or the world around me. That’s perhaps the most significant thing that is different from the world now and the world then.

 

Do you have 7 AM friends?

Today, I woke up at 7 AM in the morning. I had gone to bed close to 1 AM, so I was a little surprised when I woke up six hours later, feeling quite fresh. My first instinct was to go back to sleep (the sun was shrouded by fog, so the light that filtered into the room was not harsh enough to rub the sleep off). However, on the other hand, I have not got up this early in the morning in a really long time (in fact, I cannot remember when was the last time I woke up at 7 AM – I have very clear memories of staying awake till three AM, I was up even yesterday).

I have always been this morning person. As a student, I woke up early, ate my breakfast, studied for a while, got ready for school and left. In college too, I used to wake up early, because I wanted to use about two hours of study time. I generally can concentrate better in the mornings and I could remember the things that I read in the mornings as well.

When I first came to Bangalore, we had to get up early in the morning too. I remember in the first fourteen days of work life, we were staying at this company provided accommodation. They gave us complimentary breakfast as well. It was good food. I was staying in a beautiful flat and learning to negotiate Bangalore life, which was different from the life I was used to.

Then I moved to my current flat. That time too, we used to wake up in the morning. I was sharing my room and we had dedicated bathing times to make things easier. So, you couldn’t afford to sleep too late. The maid would come in the morning, the cook that couple of my flatmates were using would come in the morning! The house was abuzz with life in the morning. I even started cooking and packing lunch for work for quite sometime.

Then came the change of timing: from 1 to 10 PM. There was no incentive anymore to waking up early, so my routine kept changing and changing, till the average time when I got up from bed hit 9 AM.

I do not like that one bit. I want to wake up in the morning and see the first rays of the sun. I want to feel the morning chill and romanticize all the cool things that I can do until I absolutely need to get ready for office. I want to go out in the balcony and watch parents dropping little kids to school. I have been getting more and more frustrated of not having enough time to myself before going to work – somehow it does not satiate the me time within me.

When I woke up this morning, there was nobody in the house. My roommate’s bed had not been slept in. I felt strange, being alone in the house. I wanted to talk to someone.

You cannot call up people at 7 AM these days. Most of the people I know are either in their last hour of sleep before they have to start getting ready for work, or have only gone to sleep two hours back. I hate waking up people from sleep. Somehow, I remember college days. During college days, you could call up people at 7 AM and expect people to take your call – because they would be up studying too. Now, I do not know anyone’s schedules. I don’t know what is the right time to call, except for the weekends. In the end, I called my family and spoke to my father and mother.

Communication has diversified so much. But communicating, in a way, has become harder. There are so many constraints around availability.

I don’t have a 7 AM friend. In fact, it is easier to find a 3 AM friend than a 7 AM friend. What do you think?