Restless..

Days come and go, months, years…… and with each passing moment this utter sense of not attaining your full potential grows inside you. Were you meant to do better things in life, is this not your destiny,, wherever you are this moment, home, work, travelling, resting, writing, reading.. are you what you are supposed to be; a photographer, an executive, an entrepreneur, a social worker, an artist, a sailor, a writer…. Is this really your true calling. Does this give you joy.

Our lives have so many facets. A woman is a daughter, mother, sister, bhabhi, daughter in law, all at the same time. For her kids she is the cook, chauffeur, primary care giver, play mate, teacher, friend, guide all rolled into one. Our lives really are full to the brim. If we allocate each role half an hour everyday we would run out of the number of hours in a day. This reminds of a wonderful and really insightful article I read a few months ago.

It talked about how to do everything in your life fully. Its only then do you really enjoy the true pleasures of it. When you get up, get up fully. Appreciate the light around you as it touches your face and gives colour to everything you see. The water is blue, the flowers are red and the trees are green because of this ultimate source of energy- the sun. Take it with your arms wide open and ask it to colour your life, let it not be dull even for a moment.

When you drink tea, drink it fully. Experience every nerve ending reacting to the tea entering your body.

When you eat, eat fully. Savour the individual ingredients and how the crunch releases the flavours in your mouth.  How you are blessed that you receive this enjoyment everyday.

At the risk of sounding like a monk, I have gone ahead and given you the discourse. But please let it not be just that. Practice it for a day, I did. Two days back I did this complete exercise. With my son yapping in the background, it’s not that I had to live in a monastery to do this. And its amazing, I am still thinking about the breakfast I had on that day. Was it something exquisite. Not really it was just toasted bread with lettuce and tomatoes. It was so amazing that I had the same thing the next day, but I didn’t have the same feeling, because I didn’t eat it fully. I was constantly after my son to finish his breakfast quickly so that we can do something unimportant.

I mean really what is this urgent need to finish our food as soon as its served to us. Its like a race against time. Its like if we don’t finish it in 5 minutes ,,, its going to vanish..POOF !!

Even when we go out for dinner, if its only family ,, we are waiting restlessly for the menu to arrive, restless for the waiter to take the order, restless for the food to arrive. And when the food comes, it’s a very sincere effort to polish off our plates which have a time bomb ticking next to them. We don’t even wait for the waiter to whisk away our plates we ask him to prepare the bill first.

What’s all this restlessness about ? Oh! And we wont eat dessert here because frankly we have had too much of this waiter’s slow service and too much of this ambience. We will, however, go a different place to seek new fellow patrons, new ambience, new slow waiter and repeat the travel against time exercise there as well.

What is this restlessness about ?