| I |
have recently moved to a suburb, which is nothing close to what this city has meant for me, a city that I was so used to. I did have a vague sense of what I was getting into but the actual act is nothing short of being transformative.
That it has slowed down the pace and home has become the centre of attention, as I perhaps wanted, is only one aspect of the transformation. A garden of one’s own and plenty of birds to feed in the morning are some joyful gains indeed. To be honest, it does get a bit depressing in the new setting.
Friends who come to this house — not as often as they used to — notice the silence in the neighbourhood. What a relief from the unending buzz of the centre, they say. I, on the other hand, am thinking more about this noise that defines our collective being: a culture of, shall we say, anxiety that we are building for ourselves. Consciously.
Suburb such as the one that I now live in is as car-dependent as others, with no public transport even in sight. I now have to drive 20 or so kilometres to work every morning, and the drive back is exhausting, more because I am leaving the buzz to enter again into a zone of silence.
I was telling a friend who tried to help by saying that I must utilise the opportunity to listen to “all the missed podcasts” while driving. I have nothing against podcasts per se but would rather switch on the radio and surf channels to find some good music.
Finding good music on radio is proving a difficult undertaking, no doubt. But I’m a little perturbed by this constant feeling of inadequacy that I see around me, this permanent need for stimulation — to pursue something, to improve oneself. By keeping the brain/ mind occupied. All the time.
Should we be placing all blame on technology?
Amid this glut of information (they call it ‘content’ now), there is no dearth of what you’d call good stuff, podcasts included. So why not, everyone says.
Truth is that technology has allowed work to creep into our homes a lot more than it has done the opposite. Technically speaking, we remain in a default work mode all the time, though some might like to think they defy the workspace and time by using it to socialise with friends. On social media that is.
The bottom-line is that our work lives are now all mixed up with our personal time in a way that we can’t tell them apart. The FOMO (fear of missing out) must not be taken lightly. It is consuming us, rather fast.
‘Light’ is the word I was looking for. How does one feel light in this race of stressful careers? I feel like we have intentionally allowed ourselves to be defined by our work when we are more, a lot more, than a sum of the degrees we acquire, the work we do, the novel we write, the money we earn.
We start the exercise early. By asking children what they want to become when they grow up. Ridiculous, isn’t it. People should just stop asking questions.
My point is that we are surrounded by achievement, performance, engagement. Ironically, in a vastly unequal world. Everyone’s chasing limelight, seeking validation, wanting to be counted. Parents are celebrating their children’s grades, oblivious to those who got ‘left behind’ in the race.
The ‘like’ button killed it. I too have done it/ am doing it; so, guilty as charged.
Yet, why does it scare me when people, both young and old, want to be seen as doing something more than doing the thing itself, taking all pleasure out of that act of doing. Selfies are eating up your time together, guys.
Someone may have stated the obvious by saying it’s a competitive world, but they forgot to mention that this was done very deliberately. Nor does the competitive world look too pretty after all.
So how do we try to make it less competitive? Slow down, I’d say. Withdraw. Feel. Observe. Slow down. Detach. Sleep. Enjoy your dreams as nouns more than as verbs. Slow down. Live in the moment. Make time for friends. Meet the family. Eat slow cooked food. Read paper books. Laugh out loud in real. Watch movies together. Make friends. Call them shamelessly. Meet them. Slow down.
End the culture of anxiety and create a counter culture. Of slowness.
Farah Zia is a former editor of TNS. She is Director Human Rights Commission ofPakistan