Peace is Around the Corner
This year I have been working on my feelings and how my thinking or my mental condition affects my life. I have been continuously experimenting and exploring if a situation that I am going through is purely internal that it only exists in my mind or it’s a consequence of something happening in my surrounding on which I do not have control. This self-exploration is the result of the thought that most of us are not working to get by or to survive. Unlike our parents or ancestors getting by is a given for most of the people of our generation. We are not working anymore just for food, clothes or shelter instead of wanting to pursue a lifestyle with a purpose, meaning or an impact on the world. No matter of how beautiful it sounds to live a life with purpose and passion than to live to survive people of my generation are not happy. Almost all of my friends including I are not satisfied with our career even though we are more qualified and have exciting jobs than what our parents had. We are not as content as our parents were with our lifestyle also though we often get to travel around the world, buy more expensive clothes, buy highly advanced gizmos than what our parents had when they were of our age. We are deeply unsatisfied, anxious and stressed.
Some of the reasons for our unsatisfaction are the fabrications of our brain which has nothing do to with the empirical reality. For example, buying a top end expensive phone over a fully functional low range smartphone has no advantage at least not more than a better camera. But still many of us feel compelled to buy an expensive phone thinking that it will improve our lives. And to do that we are ready to either take a loan or cut down on essentials such as health insurance or retirement planning. This high-end phone-related anxiety is only a function of our brain it has nothing to do with the ground reality. Even if we decide to stop using our smartphones for a year, the world will not come to an end. We will not get separated from the people that we love, and we will also not get void of all the entertainment in our lives, we will necessarily not get lost everytime we step out of our homes and admittedly not many people will miss our self-centred pout selfies. I never bought an expensive high-end phone in the past because I couldn’t afford it. However, this year with a new job in the USA I had the opportunity to buy whatever phone I wanted, but somehow my conscious did not allow me. Is it because I am still in the mindset of using cheap smartphones or I managed to reason about my choice. Having used my Motorola G5 plus for the past nine months, I think that I made the right decision. I am pretty confident now that I am not a sufferer of the modern smartphone related anxiety anymore.
Another situation that I often go through is the temptation to spend money on things that can be taken care of with a little bit of thinking and discipline. For example, lately, it’s been very tempting to buy a spare computer for experiments. Forking out money on the things that you love seems to be easy, but buying more products is necessarily not going to solve your problems or satisfy you. It will though put a hole in your wallet. I gave up on this urge of spending money to buy a spare computer by carefully looking around and cataloguing the resources that I either already have or can arrange for a low price. And I figured out that I have a Raspberry Pi, two free accounts on Google Cloud Platform and also a remote machine from a friend. I only needed to be cleaver in utilising these resources. It’s been a couple of months now that I successfully carried out all the projects for which I needed the spare computer. It was painful and also depressive to restrict myself, but once I went through it, it brought me more pleasure than if I would have spent loads of money on buying a new computer.
Similar emotions I feel whenever I go shopping in a thrift store like Good Will or Salvation Army. I feel sad and depressed that why I am buying in a store that is primarily for poor people. Surely I can afford nicer things for myself and my family. Even though I feel bad going to a thrift store I know the reason behind it which helps to raise myself. I am living in the USA on a non-immigrant VISA right now, and therefore it does not make sense to hoard expensive items that I need to throw away when I leave. Also from this year, I am investing ten per cent of my salary every month for long-term goals. Even if I do not have these reasons not to buy expensive things the depressive thoughts of buying in a poor people store should not be there. It is not changing the fact that I do earn fine. It is not changing the fact that I can buy expensive products whenever I want. Right now I choose not to do so for better reasons.
In conclusion, as I mentioned above our feelings many times are just a fabrication of our mind based on things that should not matter. The moment we take a step back and reason; peace is around the corner.
