Our daily schedule drains our energy and leaves little time to contemplate the meaning of life. We wake up in the morning and help the kids get ready for school. By the time they leave for school, it’s time for a walk or morning exercise, and after we return and finish the newspaper, it’s time to head to the office. The moment we reach the office, we operate on autopilot for the rest of the day. When we finally get home, we are almost exhausted, but we somehow manage to complete our evening walk, have dinner, and go to bed. Most people in this world live the same life. We wait for the weekend to watch movies and socialise with friends, and spend some time with family. Weekend passes very quickly, and again, the same routine takes over. In fact, with quick changes in the work culture in almost every organization, now even weekends are turning into working days.
Pre-civilization, each human being was free to choose their schedule. Conditions were quite harsh. Everybody needs to work hard for their food. Shetlers were not safe. But everybody had freedom. Then, we started to build communities. Communities provided us safe havens. We divided the work and exchanged the same initially through a barter system, and later, with the discovery of money, exchange became smooth. Somebody will produce food, somebody will build homes, somebody will teach, somebody will fight for the kingdom, somebody will trade, and all of them will get money and use that money to get what they want. What a wonderful system. Everybody gets what they need and works in one specialised area rather than having to bother about everything. In fact, this wonderful human civilization has taken us this far, where I am typing on the laptop in Delhi, and you are reading the post on your mobile screen in a different part of the country or world. That's amazing. We are safe in our flats. We have water, electricity, and gas right inside our homes available 24*7.
What is the cost of these comforts? We have to earn money to continue the same facilities. We have to work in offices to earn money. We have to reach the office in the morning and spend the whole day in the office. Even to be able to get a job, we have to work hard at school and college and beat the competition. Not everybody will get a premium job where the office is comfortable. Some have to work in a quite challenging ecosystem. Some have to work in even dangerous ecosystems where life and death are just a step away from each other. There is constant pressure on the kids to work hard and harder to get the job that their parents consider to be a dream job. Thus, right from childhood, children are stressed. They are falling ill due to this constant stress, and some even commit suicide. That seems to be quite counterintuitive. The entire civilization took place to make us safe and comfortable, and the same civilization is making us stressed and depressed. What has gone wrong with the same?
Probably, we have damaged ourselves with almost every innovation. We invented TV and turned into couch potatoes. We invented nuclear weapons and burned our own fellow human beings. We invented the internet and are now suffering from the addiction to Netflix and mobile screens. We invented fast food, and the entire generation of human beings is suffering from health issues. We invented industries, and the entire world is suffering from the issue of pollution and global warming. The problem is not with these inventions and developments, but the problem is with their "unmindful use". Our greed has blinded us. We do not hesitate to exploit our fellow human beings. In the packed daily schedules, we miss the date with ourselves. We do not have time to understand ourselves and the purpose of life. Whatever little understanding of life we have, we end up passing the same on to our next generation, and they, too, live their lives with that limited understanding. In the process, some greedy "haves" use the rest of the "have-nots" as tools to gather more and more money and power.
"Freedom from Routine" needs awareness. We just need to be mindful of the difference between needs and greed. The moment we understand this difference, we grasp the cost of greed. We know that we have become slaves to greed, and the moment we choose freedom over slavery, we say goodbye to greed: the greed of money, power, social validation, and achievements. This choice grants us great freedom with our time. Freedom is not about wasting precious time but rather about using it to contemplate the meaning of life, to understand ourselves, and to comprehend the reality of life. Such freedom is priceless because it removes the "cover of illusion" and reveals reality. Since all fears and insecurities are also creations of that "illusion," we become fearless, and that fearlessness brings an "end to the inner conflicts." We embark on exploration without inner conflicts and fears, which is why we ultimately explore our fullest potential. All the "inner conflicts" arise when one part of us tries to stop us out of the "fear of losing what we have," while the other part desires exploration. The moment we realize that "what we have" holds no substance in the "real world," that inner conflict disappears, and we explore the domain of reality with complete freedom.
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