Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to have a conversation with someone these days without discovering that they're busy?
"How are you?"
"Busy, yaar. Crazy busy."
"Ah. Good."
END OF CONVERSATION
Photo by Aaron M Varughese on Unsplash
Since when did being perpetually exhausted become a sign that life is going well?
We seem to have arrived at a rather peculiar place in human evolution. We've invented machines to save time, apps to organise our lives, food that arrives at our doorstep without requiring us to put on pants, and cars that can practically drive themselves. And yet, we have somehow managed to become busier than our grandparents, who didn't have half these conveniences and still found time to sit on a veranda and discuss why the Raju's son was a disappointment or Sharma's son was a genius.
We have made tremendous progress as a species. Apparently, having a little time to ourselves wasn't part of the plan.
Welcome to the Great Indian Race to Nowhere in Particular.
It's a peculiar race. Nobody remembers signing up for it, nobody knows who is keeping score, and the finish line seems to move every time we get close. But we're all running. Some of us are sprinting. Others are jogging with expensive smartwatches that tell us we're not getting enough sleep.
And God forbid we should stop for a breather. Someone might get ahead.
It's all about keeping up.
Growing up, I was under the impression that being an adult meant having some degree of control over your life but more importantly, the freedom of choosing what you want to do and when you wanted to do it. Like all kids, I wanted this freedom. So I studied, got a job, earned money, took care of responsibilities and, eventually, got to enjoy the fruits of all that effort.
Nobody mentioned the fine print beneath this picture of the Great Indian Dream.
The education needed the suitable job. The better job leads to a bigger house. The bigger house needs better furniture. The furniture deserves a bigger television. The television requires a better internet connection. And before you know it, you're working longer hours to pay for things you barely have time to enjoy.
Consumerism. What a brilliant life!
We spend the best part of our lives trying to get somewhere, only to discover that the place we were trying to get to comes with a fresh set of things to worry about.
The student wants to graduate. The graduate wants a job. The employee wants a promotion. The manager wants to become a director. The director wants to become a vice president. And the vice president, I imagine, wants to become a person who can go to the toilet without checking his phone.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking ourselves what enough looks like.
Not because we don't know the answer. Perhaps because we're afraid that the answer might be less than what everyone else seems to be chasing.
Because if we decide that what we have is enough, what happens to the race? What happens to all those years spent convincing ourselves that happiness is just one promotion, one purchase, one achievement or one milestone away?
Worse still, what if we discover that we've been running in the wrong direction?
If there's one thing we've perfected, it's the art of comparing our lives with other people's highlight reels. The Sharmas have a lot to answer for.
Someone buys a house. Someone gets married. Someone has a child. Someone buys a bigger house, has another child, gets promoted, takes a holiday in Switzerland and posts a photograph that makes their life look like a tourism brochure.
Meanwhile, you're sitting in traffic on the Outer Ring Road, wondering whether the coconut chutney you had for breakfast was a little too ambitious.
It's difficult not to compare.
Our parents compared us with the neighbour's children. We compare ourselves with our colleagues, friends and relatives. And now, thanks to social media, we can compare ourselves with strangers we've never met, in cities we've never visited, living lives we know absolutely nothing about, with money that we will never ever earn.
We've democratised insecurity. Everyone gets a front-row seat to somebody else's apparent success.
The problem isn't that other people are doing well. That's a good thing. The problem is that we've started treating their lives as a measuring instrument for our own.
A friend buys a new car, and suddenly your perfectly functional car seems embarrassingly old. Someone takes an international holiday, and your weekend trip to Coorg or Goa (!) begins to feel like a poor life decision. A colleague gets promoted, and you're left wondering whether the last three years of your life have been a complete waste.
Nothing about your life has changed. Only your perception of it.
And yet, the dissatisfaction is real.
I find that fascinating. We can be perfectly content with what we have until somebody shows us something we didn't know we were supposed to want.
The irony is that the people we're comparing ourselves with are probably doing exactly the same thing. The person showing off a new car might be wondering how their friend's new house is bigger. The person posting photographs from Switzerland might be envious of somebody who appears to have more time with their family.
We're all looking over the fence, admiring somebody else's grass, while quietly hoping they haven't noticed the weeds in ours.
Perhaps the grass really is greener on the other side. Or perhaps the neighbour has simply invested in a better gardener.
Either way, we might want to spend a little less time looking over the fence.
When did doing nothing become a problem?
I miss the idea of an afternoon that doesn't have to justify its existence.
An afternoon spent listening to music. Reading a book. Going for a drive without a destination. Sitting around with friends and talking absolute nonsense for three hours.
No agenda. No deliverables. No expectation that the experience must somehow contribute to our personal growth.
Just time. Just doing nothing.
Today, even leisure seems to have acquired performance targets.
We go to the gym to improve ourselves. We travel to broaden our horizons. We take up hobbies to develop new skills. We listen to podcasts to become more informed. We read books to become more knowledgeable. We meditate to become more mindful.
I'm not knocking any of these things. I've done enough of them myself to know they can be worthwhile.
But must everything have a purpose?
Can't I cycle simply because I enjoy cycling? Can't I listen to the same old songs without feeling the need to discover new music? Can't I spend a Sunday watching a ridiculous film without having to describe it as my way of unwinding after a demanding week?
We've turned self-improvement into a full-time occupation. There is always something about ourselves that needs fixing, something we could be doing better, some new habit we should adopt.
At this rate, the only person who'll be completely satisfied with us is the person selling us the next productivity app.
And perhaps that's the real absurdity. We've become so busy trying to improve our lives that we've made it increasingly difficult to enjoy them as they are.
There's a difference between wanting to grow and believing that the person you are today is never quite good enough.
One is ambition. The other is a subscription service to permanent dissatisfaction.
The problem isn't ambition. It's the absence of a finish line. The inability to know when to stop seeking.
Now, before someone accuses me of advocating a life of laziness, let me make something clear - I'm not suggesting we give up our ambitions, stop working towards our goals or abandon our responsibilities. There is immense satisfaction in building something, learning something difficult, earning your independence or achieving something you've worked hard for.
Ambition has its place. Hard work matters. Financial security matters. And anyone who tells you otherwise has either inherited a fortune or hasn't had to worry about an EMI or a bill.
The question is not whether we should aspire to more. It's whether we know why we want more.
Do we want the bigger house because we need the space, or because our friends have bigger houses? Do we want the promotion because the work excites us, or because the title makes us feel more important? Do we want to travel to a particular place because we've always wanted to see it, or because our social media feed has convinced us that we haven't really lived until we've been there?
These aren't easy questions. Nor do they always have clear answers.
Sometimes we want things for perfectly good reasons. Sometimes we want them because we've been conditioned to believe that wanting them is what successful people do.
The distinction matters.
Because there is nothing particularly liberating about spending thirty years climbing a ladder only to discover that the ladder was leaning against somebody else's wall.
And the person whose wall it was might not even be particularly interesting.
Perhaps we need to redefine what getting ahead means
I've been thinking about what it would mean to get ahead without constantly needing to get further ahead.
Perhaps it means earning enough to live comfortably without allowing the pursuit of money to consume every waking hour.
Perhaps it means having a job that pays the bills without requiring it to define who we are.
Perhaps it means being able to spend time with people we love without feeling guilty about the things we aren't doing.
Perhaps it means having the courage to say no to opportunities that look impressive on paper but would make our lives considerably worse.
Or perhaps it means accepting that a perfectly ordinary life isn't necessarily an unsuccessful one.
There is something rather reassuring about that last thought.
Not everyone needs to build an empire. Not everyone needs to become a millionaire before forty, own three properties, travel to twenty countries or leave behind a legacy that will be discussed in management textbooks.
Some people just want a comfortable home, meaningful relationships, work that doesn't make them miserable, and enough time to enjoy a cup of tea while it's still hot.
That's not a lack of ambition. It might simply be a different definition of success.
And it's a perfectly legitimate one.
We don't all have to want the same things. More importantly, we don't all have to want them at the same time.
The person getting married at twenty-five isn't necessarily ahead of the person who gets married at thirty-five. The person buying a house isn't automatically doing better than the person who prefers to rent. The person who stays in one city isn't necessarily less adventurous than the person who keeps moving.
Life isn't a group project in which everyone must submit the same assignment by the same deadline.
Yet we behave as though it is.
We worry about falling behind people who are pursuing entirely different lives, using entirely different definitions of success, under entirely different circumstances.
And then we wonder why we're tired.
So, where are we all going?
I don't have a neat answer to that question. I'm not sure anyone does.
I do know that time is a rather peculiar currency. We spend it as though there will always be more, and then one day we look back and realise that some of the things we kept postponing were the very things that made life worth living.
The conversation with an old friend. The road trip we never got around to taking. The afternoon we could have spent doing nothing but chose to be productive instead.
We tell ourselves we'll get to these things when life settles down.
But life has never been particularly good at settling down. There's always another bill, another responsibility, another goal, another reason to wait until things are a little more convenient.
And if we're not careful, we'll spend our entire lives preparing to live them.
Maybe the answer isn't to slow down all the time. Some days deserve to be busy. Some goals deserve our full attention. Some races are worth running.
But perhaps we should occasionally stop long enough to ask whether we're running because we want to reach the destination, or simply because everyone around us seems to be running too.
There's a difference.
One is a choice. The other is a habit.
And habits, as we know, can be rather difficult to break.
So here's a thought.
The next time someone asks you how you're doing, try resisting the temptation to give them a detailed account of everything you've been busy with.
You could tell them you're doing well. You could tell them you're having a quiet week. You could even admit that you've spent an entire Sunday doing absolutely nothing productive.
The world will probably survive.
And if somebody asks what you've achieved lately, you could always tell them you've managed to enjoy a little bit of your own life.
No certificate. No LinkedIn post. No photograph required.
Just the quiet satisfaction of having been there for it.
Because when all is said and done, the point of getting somewhere is presumably to enjoy being there.
And if we're too busy running to do that, perhaps it's time we stopped to check whether we're going anywhere at all.
Or whether we've simply become very good at running.
