Being..

You have a fancy job. You have cool friends. You have a family that visits occasionally and you therefore feel you are in touch with them. You also have a vehicle to get around the city, you have a pay cheque that pays for unnecessary expenses like ready-made ginger-garlic paste, an extra skillet, more than two sets of a tea set and an extra pink kurta although you already have one but of course, this new one’s silk, the old one’s crepe.

You have a weekend that is hard-earned, so you feel you deserve it, you have a spouse who you see properly only over these well-earned weekends so they seem extra beautiful and you want to be considerate to them because you hardly get the time to see them otherwise. You have never faced endless stretches of empty time, except the last time you were still a student in college and received month long vacations. Now, the only time you face endless stretches of time (and I do not mean one long hour, I mean weeks, maybe months) is when you go on a real sick leave, or perhaps a maternity leave if you are a woman.

You feel your busy lifestyle and extremely cool social life makes your life interesting. You are wrong. You have simply forced yourself into a situation where there is limited time left to you where you are not supposed to be doing something to justify yourself.

You go out to eat, you meet some friends, you catch a few movies, you plan trips, you social network. Five hours of free time left in a week – spent sleeping or blankly flicking through channels, and perhaps, just perhaps, on a Sunday evening, you are faced with that inexplicable feeling of emptiness when you are secretly dying for Monday to arrive so you can surround yourself with unreality again, the buzz if office colleagues, the bitching about a new HR policy, the discussion about a stock price rise.

What would you do but, if that inexplicable feeling of a Sunday afternoon hit you hard in the face on a weekday and the next day and the next day and the next day? Eventually, you will hit a spot where you cannot sleep anymore or sit in front of the TV anymore, because the TV is not designed for people who sit in front of it all day – there are too many repeat telecasts.

Eventually, you would get up and cast around, breathlessly, for that which brings more purpose and activity to your life. Eventually, you would come face to face with your dreams. Good for you.

Eventually, you would achieve your dreams.

Eventually, you would be back to that Sunday afternoon, and finally, finally, that inexplicable feeling of doom that a Sunday afternoon brings with it, will stop plaguing you – you know why?

Because you will no longer be casting around for a purpose. You will do what you have to but you will finally have earned the title  that  you are known for.