Our office begins tomorrow with
50% attendance. It’s going to be interesting to see how we ‘ease’ (read:
‘tire’) ourselves back into the pre-Covid routines. There are contrarian views about
what’s the ‘right’ way forward in professional (and personal, of course)
conducts. We now have the ‘WFH Warriors’ arguing about how it
makes sense to do certain jobs from remote places. It’s time, money, space and stress
optimized. While the ‘Optimists’ believe that getting back together is akin to getting back to normalcy. And they stress upon how
certain tasks are easily accomplished in person than through screen time.
I agree with both the sides. And
therefore I run the risk of being seen as a hypocrite or worse, fake.
But really, I do agree with individual arguments from both the ends. They all
seem logical and relevant. However it’s difficult to take sides. Arguing is
genuinely futile. To each their own in this case, please.
Futility of arguments is a
recurring theme appearing in so many conversations I’ve had lately. People tell
me they are tired of putting across the voice that doesn’t register.
They’re also tired of bearing the hurt of not being understood. And there are
way too many practical things (like livelihood and maintaining social diplomacy)
to consider that take up all our mind-space and bandwidths.
And therefore, Mind-space is my
new favorite term to use in any (and all) conversations these days. It doesn’t matter
what the topic is. This term finds relevance everywhere. It’s also the least
explored spaces, you know. Our mind-space is vast enough to be
considered nearly infinite. It’s also complex and dynamic. It changes as we do
and plays games on us to make us believe concepts that do not exist in
objective reality. It makes us believe in concepts of success and failure. Of love
and hatred. Of right and wrong. And scandalously, concepts of the sacred and
profane.
I imagine this space as a round
box that contains tones of shit. I mean, lots of cool network wires sparking
here and there and looking completely out-of-control. This box also has a
nice-tight lid that can be used to change its environment and working parameters.
It’s
like an underwater secret laboratory which looks like an intelligent mess. The
bridge between this laboratory and us is the lid that we can maneuver. We
can control how much it opens and closes. We can operate it at different perceptive efficiencies.
And therefore have different experiences or better, different perceptions of
exact same experiences.
The lid operates without our
conscious effort too. And if we are able to mindfully operate it,
we become a part of creating what we experience. Over time and with
practice we can master the environment of our minds. We can opt to perceive
differently. We can open ourselves to a range of new emotions. The wider it
maybe, the richer our experiences. And therefore, our lives.
I am often asked, why I chose to
live and work in India while my family was settled abroad. I’ve always
responded with this:
“This country lets you live and
end a thousand lives each day. You see beauty next to filth. You find hope in
grimmest of streets. And you find the will to live. The will to struggle and
survive. And you see diversity. You see both science and dogma. And there’s
always so much happening that it keeps you hooked. To the dopamine rush of new
emotions. To the high that comes when we inch towards uncharted territories
of our minds (and most definitely our hearts). And then of course because it’s
a secular liberal democracy with freedom of speech and individual liberty.”
Until recently, at least?
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| One sunny afternoon at Uptown Mirdif, Dubai when I decided to click nature. (There's no correlation with the content of the blog post. I had no other picture to post and didn't want to borrow from the internet.) |
This post is a ramble. I am
posting it for the sake of continuity alone.
Until next time.
