Standing Still

What is it like to stare at a wall? A ceiling? The endless blue sky? or the dark night sky?

When was the last time you did so? If you are a millennial, I may have to rephrase the question to “Have you ever done so in your life”?

In this era, no one even has to look at their loved ones in the face and talk with kindness for more than five minutes. Because you know, the next notification from the new social media app will pop up and the mobile is always with in reaching distance.

Technology has made us more distracted than ever before. Tech companies have made us full time consumers. We consume content all the time, be it written, audio, video or interactive (games and social media).

Most of us never knew before what it is like to live through an outbreak of a contagious disease which has no known medicine. The pandemic and epidemic are fancy, short terms to refer to such diseases and again, most of us have not even heard these terms before.

But our ancestors have lived through it many times. And it has happened at all levels, from a village to a nation to the globe. In most places, it has been only a few weeks or months since the lock down started, and we already feel like it has been years.

Time flies — this is what we have heard and experienced all our life. And we kept complaining all the time that there is no time to do this, to achieve that. Now it feels like, for a change time stopped in its tracks, turned around, looked at you in the eye and said “Ok, I will stand still, you go ahead”.

And guess what, we are still complaining, “when will all this end?”, “when can we go back to normal?” — the very normal life which you dreaded all your life has suddenly become like a vacation spot which you want to go as soon as possible.

So now we have to step back and ask the question “who’s the one with problem here — time or me?”

Sadly, the ability the ask questions to oneself and finding answers from within is becoming a lost trait. When an online search gives us all the answers we need in the blink of an eye, why should we even care to think, reflect and seek answers from within?

All the while we were complaining that we don’t have enough time to do stuff, now we are complaining we are not having enough stuff do.

By standing still, time has given us the opportunity to look at our lives and improve it. The opportunity to think. The opportunity to change. The opportunity to clear all the clutter we have accumulated in our minds and in our homes (just give away whatever you have not used in the last six months to those who need it).

The opportunity to be human again and not be slaves of technology, faking a busy but empty life.

After all, still water reflects you better than muddled water.