18. Of Busy Life

We have a timetable for everything. How long to sleep. How much to spend on morning routines. How long to commute to office. Then 8-9 hours of office. Another hour of traffic. Dinner and other evening stuff and that’s it. The same cycle then repeats for most of us.

On the weekend, we shop. So that on our weekdays we can maintain our schedule without any deviance. And we find a way to fill remaining time with entertainment and and social media fights.

In short we are always “busy”. Every newer generation has more and more appliances, machines; presumably to give them more time to do things that they love.

We are living in an era where we can get pretty much anything at the click of a button - delivered to our doorstep including food.

Life is more convenient on the surface but people are not necessarily getting time to do what they really want to do or love to do. Ask yourself, are you getting enough time for yourself ? Most of the people have a plan to counter it. They want to do all the things they love - after they retire. May be in 60s or later for some.

Which is fair - but there is a catch, even if everything goes according to the plan. You may not be able to do everything in your 60s that you are doing now. Nor that you will be able to enjoy it with the same zeal as you can now.

When we are busy, we do same things again and again every day. The only way we can be busy “properly” and “efficiently” is if nothing changes. No time for passion Or no time to figure out what you really wanted to do in life in the first place. Everything has to be SAME so that we can observe our busy routine.

Well what’s wrong with that ?

Well imagine, If you ate pizza every day - as your every meal, for the first day may be, you will be excited. But after a week you may not want to even look at a pizza on the dining table.

But yet we are okay to do more or less the same things, follow the same routine for months and years on. Just so that we can be busy efficiently.

Imagine what kind of toll that must have on your soul!

It’s like you are going through a never ending,never changing, boring, dull desert.

And today’s quote sums that up exactly

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

The quote is attributed to Socretes. He needs no introduction. He was a Greek philosopher.

Along with his many contributions to the field of philosophy in general, he is also known for the “Socratic method” which is a kind of fact finding dialog you can undertake to find out the truth and foster critical thinking.

One of his other quotes which I am sure we will discuss sometimes is

An honest man is always a child.

But for now the picture behind the quote.

Concrete roads and slabs when they are built, they need to maintain moisture on them to prevent cracks for the first few days.

In India this is generally done by laying wet jute bags on top for few days once the road is built.

Te rad in this picture was recently built in front of my apartment complex and after a few days I noticed shoots of fresh grass growing on top - which is amusing when you consider it’s a cement concrete slab underneath.

Soilless farming is a new trend in agriculture now a days and seems like the nature has already figured that out here - growing fresh luscious grass on top of a concrete slab.

If you are not busy all the time, you can give yourself time to notice things like this. Things in nature which we are part of.

Next time when you feel you are always busy - go out and check if you can notice something - however small - but new !

Thanks for reading through,

-Nikhil