Work and leisure : Success is just a story
“Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”― George Mac Donald, Wilfrid Cumbermede.
It was lush green with freshly growing grass in the foothills of Himalayas after the spring showers. A herd of goats and sheep were grazing with contentment. The only things that could get heard in the silent and serene environment were their occasional bleating and the clinging of the brass bells tied around their neck. The morning Sun glowed and gave warmth while melting the mountain mist away. The solitary traveler trudged along with a rucksack hung on his back and a camera which he handled delicately while clicking images to write his travel story. He stopped to admire the scattered flock, and his eyes were delighted to find another human around. An adolescent boy was lying under a tree, blissfully ignorant of any horizon beyond what he could see at the moment. The traveler approached the boy and tried to strike a conversation in a reconciled vernacular which both could convey each other in.
The traveler told him about the exciting world beyond these grasslands, the sprawling cities, industries, offices, malls, and all of it which the boy heard agape in fantasy. The traveler suggested to the boy that he was young and that he should go to the nearby city and find for himself a job there. He could earn money in cash. Now what was cash? The boy wondered. Yes, that’s the power he would have to buy anything that he wants to? Buy what? It perplexed the boy. All he needed was food, which he got, anyway… and then? The boy asked in intrigue. The traveler unrolled a life’s success plan before his sole audience that one could earn money through sheer hard work, save from his salary, study on the side to enable himself for a better-paying job, buy a car to move around, rent an accommodation… all sounded too complicated to the boy …. and then? He asked again. By now the traveler was quite exhausted and said in despair, “and then, you can buy yourself a holiday package in the countryside and lie on the green grass and bask under the Sun dammed!’
“That’s what I’m doing every day, even now, so why do I have to struggle so hard for it?” the boy chuckled.
The conversation ended. The traveler learnt his lesson and trudged away into the horizon as the boy’s eyes followed him quizzically.
What could beat a blissful state of ignorance? In 75 years or more that a human usually lives, a third goes away in a competitive struggle to reach ‘somewhere’ to begin one’s actual life that could qualify as a career. Another third goes into grinding between hard work and dispensing the responsibilities of keeping a family. The remaining third of the pie of life is the most painful one when one has to deal with decline… of income, health, family and everything. It requires all that hard work just to buy oneself leisure?
Achievements are those academic pursuits that would enable success in careers and success is the measure of earning a lot of money, and money is that power which enables us to buy comforts and leisure that could give us happiness, and happiness is such an elusive end to our lifetime of pursuit which could have different perspectives for every individual. The result is purely perception based and not standardized, but the path of pursuit is more or less standardized. That’s what urban lifestyle is all about. We trade the entire life for a hope… to be successful. Whether life turned out in our favor would get measured at the end of the life itself with other financial or social yardsticks irrespective of the fact that different people would have a different measure of value. What holds value for me in my life could differ from another person and since there is no common measure of value acceptable to all, hence there cannot be one standard path to achieve success either.
How often do we hear our inner call or how often can we ‘afford to’ pay heed to our inner voice? Do we really know our destiny where we want to be, or are we merely travelling endlessly on a path that could take us anywhere or nowhere? Who would judge me whether I’ve been successful and with what measure? Will you measure my success or I should measure my own? Also, why measure at all when two measurements are not comparable? So in effect we all could be successful people because to me I am successful and you are successful to yourself. Can we say that we all need to aim just to come up to our own expectation? So what should we expect from ourselves? I might say I seek inner peace. Peace within, and around me, peace everywhere. If the aim of this life is to find peace and solace, then when is the right time to find that? Should I first go through the grind or rat race to emerge as a winner, then renounce it with magnanimity and retire in recluse or should I bask every moment of my life under the warmth and glow of my inner bliss?