A Glimpse of our life today

We are lucky to be living in a time which has witnessed tremendous development and
growth which no one could have imagined few years back. It seems, we have reached the
zenith in every field which affects human life. This happened so fast and we were so busy
availing their benefits, we didn’t get time to think about the changes in a holistic manner.
It is a well established fact that a change process which is slow, will be stable in the long
run. Nowadays, it seems that we are unknowingly deviating from this, leading to unrest
in both individual and society.

There is a so called fashionable word “Stress” which has engulfed our life. People are
heard telling “ Today was a very stressful day, I need a break”…”This week has taken all
my energies and I need an outing this weekend”…”For last few months I didn’t get time
to even breathe, let us go for holidays”… Let us understand what this stress is? In simple
words, stress is a state of mind caused by different external events which produces a
discomfort because the actions or results are not as per our liking. When something
happens which is beyond our wishes or something which we are forced to do or
something which we know that there is no solution of this problem causes stress. Stress
can be produced from a small argument with your spouse from why to visit a shopping
mall to a large event like loosing you job in the present recession period. Pressure to earn
more to acquire materialistic pleasures, to fulfill our career aspirations in shortest time, to
save our jobs in recession, to be physically fit after eating so much junk foods, reaching
office fighting daily long driving and overcoming traffic jams, pressure not saving
sufficiently for our retirement life, difference of opinions with spouse and children,
argument with boss, not able to do anything for the ailing older parents due to
circumstances beyond our control are few examples which produce stress.

There are some inventions which have completely changed the human life the way it was
lived before. “Mobile phones” and “Internet” are said to be the greatest inventions of the
millennium, has dramatically improved the quality of life and even influenced the way
we perceive things. Life has become faster than ever before. But in exchange, it has taken
our precious time. Now we don’t have time to meet people with physical presence but we
call people on their mobile to stay in touch. The social networking sites were invented to
share our special joys, extreme sorrows and find childhood or school friends. But it has
become a place to tell our millions of friends “What I did today”. The number of friends
in our friends list has become a status symbol like our bank balance. We are stressed if
we don’t get a mail in every ten minutes in our inbox. We continuously check our
inboxes every ten minutes. We are stressed if we don’t get a call or an SMS in every
thirty minutes. We start checking our cell phones whether it is working fine or not. On
the other hand we get stressed when we get unnecessary telemarketing calls and SMSs,
spasms, fraud mails.
We are checking the breaking news every hour and are under pressure to know what is
happening to the world. We feel stressed if we are not able to know the news. We jump to
know this on the very next available opportunity. This is slowly eating our time on
looking and deleting the messages and we are not able to realize about the lost time due
to this. At the end of the day, these innovations take our lot of time and we are short of
time for important works in our life generating stress.

Stress is present in both our work and home life. To give best education to our children
and expect much more than what they are capable is another kind of stress. Generation
next is very much informative and they think that they can decide their life the way they
want to live. But are they matured enough? There is a huge gap in thinking process
leading to a major difference of opinions between parents and children leading to
generation of stress.

The environment around us is giving some “general” and “long term” stress. On looking
at the news papers and TV channels everyday, we are witnessing corruption in public life,
major scams, high rate of inflation and steep price rise causing increasing cost of living,
bomb blasts, terrorism, daily road accidents, daily rape cases, robberies, suicides,
murders etc. Some are the causes and some are the results of the stresses. There is unrest
in the society leading to a chaos. Are we getting time to think where we are heading?

The evolution of mankind helped individual to form a family, community, society but
again we are going back and becoming “self centered”. We are thinking only about us
and not of our surroundings because of lack of time. We know about the problems of
surroundings, community and society but have become insensitive. Economic reasons are
forcing toward “nuclear family” and “single child” theory. Joint families are breaking and
even families are breaking. We don’t have anybody to share our feelings, thoughts,
problems, and empathize with us. We are slowly missing “real friends”. Every body is
busy and nobody has time for others. We have become less tolerable and more
aggressive. We have lost the emotions. Divorce cases are on a all time high. Today’s
developments are creating a situation where we don’t need others, not even our
neighbors, forget about our relatives and friends. We can’t tolerate people who think
differently from us. Extra-marital relationships have emerged due to non-compatibility
with our partners with the passage of time. We are continuously challenging social rules
and are not hesitating in breaking it. Social life is loosing its relevance.

Now it is time to go for stress relievers. We are going for partying, visiting shopping
malls and multiplexes, watch TV programs and news, visit tourist places. If we don’t
know what to do next, either we switch on our TV or start surfing internet. Of course they
provide some relief during our involvement but in long run they also start giving stresses
slowly. Stress relievers have become stress producers.

So what we should do now? We should start thinking about us, our surrounding and
society which is the first missing thing. We have to think radically where we and our
society are heading. Can we influence or contribute to our society for at least solving a
single problem? Are we able to reduce stress of others by our noble actions? Are we
doing anything to make others happy? These are some questions and our happiness is
hidden in the answers. We can beat our stresses only through our happiness. Innovations
are for the betterment of mankind, but how we want to use it is in our hands. We have to
learn to live in adversities. Sky will not fall if we are disconnected from the outer world.
Try using one day by switching your mobile off and not watching a TV or surfing the
internet. Visit your nearby slum area that day, do some community work and feel the
difference. Reading an inspirational book, visiting an orphanage with your family,
playing your favorite childhood game with your friends will bring real happiness in your
life. Stealing some time from your daily life for morning walk in the park, doing some
meditation and yoga enhances our physical strength and mental calmness. It is to be well
understood that happiness exists only inside us and it is we, who are responsible for our
happiness.

Abhijit Dutta
Flat No. 280 FF
I.P. Colony
Faridabad