Each one of us wants to break free from the routine we are trapped in. We get up in the morning with a single thought to go to the office and finish the pending work. We arrive in the evening feeling tired after a long day of meetings. Work doesn't stop even after office hours, and the horror tune of WhatsApp messages keeps ringing throughout evenings. We want to run away from this madness, but are chased by the deafening sounds of "responsibilities" that we can not ignore. This "world" has learnt the management tricks of "carrot and stick," and when we feel too exhausted, we are offered some carrots in the form of a quick dose of adrenaline or dopamine in the form of some sensual pleasure. Some pleasure tour for a change, or some outing with friends to know that everybody is equally suffering and we are not alone in the suffering, or some honor or award that makes us feel elevated and different from the rest, all giving a spike of pleasure that disappears very soon and we are again trapped in the routine.
We hold people responsible for the trap. We hold our bosses and organizations responsible for the exploitative culture. We hold our spouse responsible, saying that due to our spouse, we are not able to live freely. We hold our kids also responsible because of the kids and their responsibilities, we are unable to live freely. We hold the relatives and society equally responsible. But have any of these actually bound us? Can anybody take the freedom away from us? We take the freedom away from a dog by placing a collar around its neck. We do not have any such collar around our neck. Then why are we not free?
We just need a flashback to our childhood. We will recall listening to the discussions in our family about the financial difficulties and the hope our parents placed on our success. We could see our parents suffer, and we thought that by getting a good job, we would make them happy. We helped them with the little household chores, and they appreciated that contribution. We felt happy with the alleviation of that self-image. In schools, we also felt elevated when our teachers praised us in the classroom in front of our friends. Those prizes, trophies, score-cards, prizes, and medals brought smiles to our faces. Our parents boasted about them in front of their friends, and we felt like we were worthy. It was painful to have a feeling of being "worthless," and that's why we craved for the moments when we were made to feel "worthy".
But, where does this feeling of being "worthless" and trying to prove our "worth" travel in our mind? Probably because of the constant, deafening sounds of the sirens of fears and insecurities. The talks about fear and security catch our ears almost every day in different forms. We keep listening about the loss of jobs, wars, exploitation, diseases, inflation, retrenchment, competition, accidents, crisis, disasters, and so many other things that make us feel insecure. We become desperate for that security. We feel that by earning money, we will become secure. We will be able to get a good education for our kids in the best universities, and their lives will be better off. At least they will not face the same fears and insecurities that we have faced all through our lives. When we want to earn money, we have to either work in some organization for a salary or we need to set up our own venture. In both cases, our social image plays a crucial role in the achievement of our target. That's why trophies, medals, certificates, and appreciations all play a significant role.
Can we see it now? We listen to the stories about fears and insecurities that are widely told in society, without examining the truth behind them. Some of these things are matters of fact, while most are our own mental stories. Since we do not examine them properly, our unconscious mind becomes a storehouse where garbage and useful things are scattered here and there. When it comes to making decisions, we are not able to discriminate between the truth and the stories our minds have listened to and believed in. Even truth has a background, and unless we are aware of the background, we will not understand whether it applies to our context. For example, after the Ahmedabad aircraft crash, our minds may believe that travelling by air is unsafe, and yet, factually, travelling by air may still be the safest. It's very easy for our unconscious mind to develop fears of travelling by flight, and that may affect our future decisions. Similarly, being fired from a job may be more attributable to the incompetence and lack of hard work of the employee rather than general economic conditions. Higher rate of divorce may be more attributable to a greater freedom of speech and acceptance of divorce by society more gracefully rather than inability to adjust.
The problem is that we are in a hurry to draw conclusions, and therefore, we lose awareness of reality. We just want to be certain, even if that certainty is based on a false conclusion. We make a lot of mental stories to be certain. That's how, with growing age, our unconscious mind becomes a storehouse of many such mental stories. These stories make us feel certain. We feel safe because we feel that we know the truth. That's the reason that when we confront the truth, we feel broken. We may make mental stories that we are not going to die soon and live happily with those stories, but death is a reality. That's why every time we encounter the death of a near and dear, we feel broken. We don't need to break free from anyone. Nobody is the cause of our trap. It is our own mental stories that are the root cause of our trap. We just need to examine these stories we have told to ourselves since childhood mindfully, and that will help us identify many unreal elements, and we will regain the freedom we were born with. We just need to be aware that we stay mindful in the present moment while encountering something new so that we do not end up making new mental stories. The more such stories we drop and the greater freedom we regain. If we could tell this simple thing to our kids and they make their life decisions mindfully, they will not get into the trap of "routine" from the very beginning and will be able to live with freedom.
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