By Gitanjali Maria:
The monsoons have arrived. How many of us wouldn’t like to just curl up with a book and a hot steaming cup of coffee by the bedside in the cool climate? Or maybe the more adventure freaky guys would prefer playing football or cycling in the heavy rains. But just pause and reflect how many of us would really care to spend time to do these things? In this hectic, fast-paced style of living, we never pause to let ourselves enjoy what we like to do. Every spare moment that we earn by doing quick work of other routine jobs is used to pile on more chores to the already filled palate of ‘to-do-activities’.
The train chugs into the station and the crowd pushes to get in to occupy the window seats. Nobody bothers to see if the old man standing at a distance away needs help in boarding the train or the little girl on the platform has got lost. The thought is always, ‘I have to get my choice seat, so I have to move fast.’ In this task of moving fast we lose on a lot of simple pleasures like watching the many tyres of the train coming to a halt or the hawker selling beautiful flowers on the station platform.
From office to home, home to dinner meetings, few people find quality time to spend with their family and kids. There is no way one can pause to enjoy the first rains, or the sun setting or the beautiful crescent moon up in the sky. There is no time to stop at the garden to enjoy the flowers or to watch the children play cricket or kabbadi. With the phone ringing constantly and chasing you wherever you run off to, there is no escape from the busy mad world.
Even the kids are not spared now a days. From tuitions in the early mornings, to regular classes and assemblies during school hours and after-school activities like karate classes, guitar classes etc. and drawing and painting classes and dance classes on weekends, kids today are sometimes much busier than their parents.
Nobody wants to wait for 5 minutes for a friend who is standing in the queue; nobody appreciates a person who says he/she did nothing for the whole hour. One is so busy that he/she gets time just to gulp down a quick meal without even being able to enjoy it. The fast paced lifestyle is now moving on to the level of break-neck speed living and can finally get crashed.
The pleasure and relief of slowly done is but something that everyone has to experience at least once in a while. Pausing your daily routine to watch others do their chores or to enjoy the rains or to play football with the kids or to even sit idle or sleep longer hours than usual is something that might seem to come in the way of your hurries run for fame and success; but these are things that can soothe you, give you pleasure and a renewed source of energy and enthusiasm. These would be the moments you would cherish throughout your life. If you don’t pause for such moments now, a time will come when you would crave for it but would not be able to have them. Do not let work expand to fill the time available for its completion.
Slow down your ‘life-vehicle’; it won’t mean that you won’t reach your destination. You would definitely reach your destination, at the same time having enjoyed the scenes en-route.