Embracing Life Beyond the Highlights

Time has started to fly lately and I do not mean it in the cliched, overused way. I really feel that because of the constant overconsumption of information, in terms of reels, commercials, videos, podcasts, audiobooks, TV, gripping series, and so on. I remember our school period of 10-13 years felt like a lifetime in itself, slowly passing weekdays and unit tests, to semesters and then a break and long holidays before the next class began. I remember the slowness of it all. I remember doing homework, watching something small on TV, playing and talking to friends. I remember how long even the 10-day Christmas break felt. Because the consumption was so limited, the TV we watched for maybe 30-60 minutes a day was not as gripping as it is today. You'd have to wait an entire day or sometimes a week for the next episode. Most forms of content required active engagement wherein you couldn't multi-task like reading a newspaper or books. All of these formats - long form. Writing snail mails to friends and cousins and talking on the phone. All of this made the time, as they say, stop and smell the flowers.

Jealousy and envy existed then, of course it did, it did since Adam's time but the proportion and expanse of it mightily varied from the current times. I remember my grandma was over the moon when we bought a car, all she cared about was the other neighbor grandma whose son had already gotten one and to come up to her level in the tiny mental race. Our mothers discussed and compared their children's marks and successes with their couple of neighbors and maybe one or two other immediate cousins. One bhaiyya I knew completed his engineering in Nasik and was very happily telling people in the society about his 2 months travel to Nepal for some 'onsite' work. You were enough then. Life was enough. None of these above people could ever be happy in today's time and age. You are competing with the world. Be in Manhattan or a small village in Uttar Pradesh, the rectangle on your palm will make sure you are not satisfied for a moment. You are envying the world - consciously or subconsciously.

I have read novels when sparks ignite between old friends at a school reunion, 30 years after school. They see each other, talk again after so many decades, and say - you haven't changed, Oh you haven't too, except the salt and pepper in your hair that suits you. And a story begins at 45. Nothing of this sort will again be written because we are privy to the egg salad someone we barely talked to in 5th grade had this morning. The mystery is gone. Unnecessary information is uploaded in our already exhausted brains. Are we supposed to be seeing and witnessing (voyeuristically almost) the lives of 500-1000 people unfolding every single day of our lives? 150 is the cognitive limit of the people with whom we can have a stable relationship of some form and 5 is the close circle number. Imagine the bombardment! 

Someone is always on vacation and someone seems to be having the best 'vibe', someone has the most loving relationship - couple goals, and someone's life is 'LIT' every single day with parties and people. It's always the highlights. All we are doing is comparing our insides to other people's outsides. I have had friends who had the best social media 'vibe' and the time of their life tell me later that all this while they were clinically depressed. I have had times in life that were so crippling but no one would ever make that out from a nice calming book post I had put up. I recently discussed with a friend the concept of 'Najar' that most of our parents are so obsessed about. I have hated it when so many aunts and uncles in the extended family constantly praised their children and my parents never showed off the few things about us siblings. But now that I think about it (of course most parts it was a superstition) could it also have been a way to just safeguard peace? What I have learned with this 33 years of existence on this planet is that most people will be with you and sympathize with you in pain, but very very few people are happy when you succeed. It may have been a way to just be happy, humble, and peaceful without instigating any form of envy. (On an unrelated note - I recently learned the difference between jealousy and envy. Jealousy requires a social situation of 3 people. You can envy a friend for her Gucci bag)

On realizing I had been hooked to Instagram a bit too much, I decided to uninstall it sometime in October and did so for a month. It was inconvenient at first when I had urges to scroll and post. However, I realized some changes in myself. I slowly started enjoying long-form content like podcasts and long videos without the need for any other distractions. I was still wasting time on YouTube however, it was looking at celebs, so there was no conscious or subconscious comparison. There was plenty of time to read books. What I also wanted to see and feel was whether there were any subconscious changes in the way we live if it's not for the gram. Overall it was a very liberating month and I plan to do this for a longer span next year in 2025 - to go off the grid for a longer haul. 

This long reflection today because I realized looking back that while 2024 has been a very good year in terms of travel, experiences, money, and materialistically in general; mental health wise it could have been calmer and nicer. Going off the grid would be a massive step in that direction! Join me :D

Art by Mrudula Bapat