Lots we do is about securing, planning and building the future.
Stashing away stuff for a prized event. Organizing routines for a special occasion. Looking forward to a celebration.
All this when we can’t be sure of how tomorrow is going to turn out. Dead or alive, we can’t see into the crystal bowl.
So celebrate today. It’s a privilege to be alive & kicking. Having food on the plate, clothes to wear and roof over the head calls for being grateful and feeling special too.
The grass is always green on the other side. Empty nesters crave company, full nesters crave solitude. Parents seek silence, couples seek space and singles seek intimacy.
If only we could start stirring a dollop of joy in what we do and chime in a jingle apt for what we are facing. If only we could start fully embracing the cards we are dealt on a daily basis. ‘I am happy, I am blessed’ is a human rarity.
Pure, unadulterated and unhinged – the first love you find as budding young adult at college. Described here is the recollection of college sweethearts.
For us it was simply joyful to wait for each other, the bus and our college sessions. We used to look forward to turning up each day, knowing we can then bask in each other’s being. Simple joys of being seated next to each other. In a bus full of people yet the world was just you and me for those twenty minutes. The ride would be just us both cherishing the quiet after the long, noisy and chaotic college day. Quiet in which we found each other and our love; of which we grew fond, of which we wove dreams of a happily ever after and of which we exchanged unsaid vows of trust and friendship.
What comes first? Your role chooses your routine or your routine defines your role?
For most working parents, roles define their routines. Once in a while they would love to be away from the parenting mode and focus on other aspects of life. Helping the individual nurture their holistic personality and other shades of a being.
Sometimes, the role remains but in a different setting, one where the routine can be more relaxed. This arrangement helps develop the existing bond. Devoid of the pressure of routine, one can be spontaneous in their quality of time spent together.
But these were rare settings. More often than not, in daily life neither can be escaped from. Take the middle path – where the role remains but the routines can be flexed to the maximum!
Can one be far from the other? A snake can be nurtured to not bite, but shall it never return to it’s true nature which is to bite?
Yes it would, when pushed to a wall, when threatened and when the fight or fright response kicks in. But humans have trained even their flight or fight response, like a double edged sword. Centuries of conditional upbringing and societal orthodoxes impact our responses sub-conciously. Unawares, we tend to utilize our nurturings more often than the nature and often nurture becomes too comfortable to be our nature altogether.
This explains the late awakenings of many beings. Who in the journey of self-discovery wonder why didn’t the obvious response come to them by nature? The answer lies in what they were nurtured to believe in.
By guru I don’t mean the dhoti clad, self proclaimed god-men. I mean what if you were living, thriving and growing by the principles of one and only one person – could be your parent, your spouse or a friend you are enamored with. Wouldn’t that blindside you, giving you no perspective that’s different than theirs.
It would be terrific to subscribe to the views and behaviours of various experts. Follow a health coach for your fitness goals, look upto a successful professional on your field for career guidance and speak to a parent-role model for your parenting woes. Limiting ourselves to a uni-dimensional life and thoughts of one is certainly not a growth path. Seek your tribe in all your spheres and cherish the real connections you make along the way.
Mountains or beach?
Tea or coffee?
Big city or Small town?
Past or Future?
Global or local?
Personal or Professional?
Traditional or Contemporary?
This or that?
Have you ever felt that you don’t belong to either. That you have a bit of both but don’t completely identify with just one of the two. Welcome to the world of ambivalents – those who are neither extremes but lie somewhere in the middle. The good part – you get best of both worlds. The bad part – neither has your heart.
Step 1 : We read, we process.
Step 2 : We assume, we analyze.
Step 3 : We prepare, we review.
& then life throws one of its curveballs. The unexpected. Go to step 1 and repeat.
Between the ‘process, prepare, repeat’ cycle, life happens. We can choose to beat ourselves down everytime the unexpected happens or can continue to adjust all the while humming our favourite tune.
Often considered an alternate economy, household productivity does support the mainstream economy and boosts domestic output albeit indirectly. Household productivity or the time spent in chores done to keep the home in order aren’t considered a part of nation’s economy as it alters the conventional parameters and can be misleading in policy making decisions.
A proxy indicator can be utilization of automation and outsourcing. Automation indicators like sales of refrigerators, washing-drying machines, dishwashers, robotic vaccum cleaners, etc are already part of Gross Domestic Product. It’s time now that outsourcing chores also gets measurable indicators and thereby included in the formal economy. For example childcare, gardening, home maintenance and likes are already listed services available in developed nations. Adding cooking cleaning, laundry, pet care, etc to the catalogue would make it comprehensive and give more dignity to these workers.
Here’s wishing for more power to the unorganised sector in the future decades! 💪
When did grocery shopping get gender-ised?! When a gourmet grocery outlet opened in my locality last month, the late-adopter in me sat back and waited to pickup the feedback buzz from the early birds. While that took longer than a month, I happened to browse through their website via a local number which came into circulation as a group forwarded on a WhatsApp.
While the outlet itself is a part of the larger retail group and hence gets credibility from the corporate brand, I was aghast to find labels like ‘her’, ‘she’ in describing their target customer segment and clientele on a public forum. As far as I remember, grocery was simple affair where the man got supplies what the woman cooked. Seems men got smarter to offload this ‘homely’ chore in the turn of the century and women lapped it up like a glorified shopping experience!
