What are the small ways you might want to opt out of the highway of life?

To create a life worth living, we must listen to our hearts

That is what I am taking to the new year – gathering experiences not things, opting out and aimless loitering (Photo credit: Suvajit Dey)

As the new year rolls out, it makes many of us want to reflect on the previous year and hope for a better time ahead. In one such conversation with a young person, it took an interesting shape. “I hope 2023 brings me a life worth living.” Her words have stayed with me and have reverberated with many other conversations I have had to create a rich symphony of reflections. Does life worth living have to do with falling in line with culturally defined ideas of success – getting into top colleges, a lucrative career which ensures all the trappings of wealth or possibly fame? Wouldn’t that be just following socially predetermined highways that do not leave much time for wandering around the trails that might take us to unknown destinations?

The pandemic was a catalyst in starting a wave of what began to be termed “Great Resignation”, where we saw people across the world leaving their high-paying jobs to do things that gave them a sense of meaning. Moving out of cities, downsizing to smaller homes with simpler lifestyles and finally being able to do things that gave them joy and meaning. In many ways, it does speak of privilege as many of us might not have that freedom to make a choice as we have homes to run, children to educate and bills to pay. But if we go beyond this restriction, this powerful idea can have a huge impact on the way we live our lives, the pressures to conform and inevitably the cost to our planet of this life of high consumption.

ALSO READ | To all our daughters and their mothers

What makes life worth living?
Who decides it?
What do we do if our ideas of life worth living are different from what is prescribed?
How do we align our lives with what we really value?
What really matters and what does not?

Story continues below this ad

These are questions that have intrigued me for years and I have asked my family, friends, young people and their families that consult me.

Gathering experiences, not things: Thirteen-year-old Rahi put it so eloquently, “Life is a sum of all our experiences and memories and not things. I do not want to waste it by being in the rat race.” I am in awe of her and really hope fervently that the social pressures do not find a way to rob her of her audacious courage to live her life in keeping with what she holds precious. Somebody I met recently shared, “I have always wanted to travel to quaint, unknown parts of the world but had always pushed that plan to later and focused on staying ahead in the race. Recently, I lost a 57-year-old friend to a sudden heart attack. It made me realise that there is no other time but now. What is the point if I wait for another 10 years and realise that my body cannot travel to these places any more? I was always scared of squandering money, but now I am scared I am squandering my life!” His words keep echoing in my mind as I wonder if while running our life on mindless auto-pilot of fitting in, we forget the finiteness of our lives and what makes it really worth it. What are the experiences that you would like to create? What are the tiny things that bring you joy that you would like to weave into your daily life? What little and big adventures you might want to take in the coming year that will live as cherished memories for the rest of your life?

Opting out: Getting stuck to what 25-year-old Shyla called the “metaphorical hamster wheel” of course comes with its perks – money, a sense of being productive and achievement but there is a cost to it too. We end up being compelled to follow culturally prescribed pathways laid out for us devoid of agency, creativity and meaningful experiences. Therefore, no surprise that the pandemic shook all of us out of our collective stupor and made us really reflect on what constitutes a life worth living. I wonder if this is the question Jacinda Ardern asked herself before making the decision to resign as the prime minister of New Zealand as she “no longer had enough in the tank.” Maybe when it is not easy to opt out completely, we might be able to fill up our “tank” through small acts of resistance like not letting our worth be defined by the targets we have to reach, finding time for playfulness, and taking a spontaneous road trip. What matters is an engaged life — to make sure we take out some time every day to do things that stretch and expand us, and help us align with our values and hopes for a deeply meaningful life. When that is taken away from us, we are left with despair, hopelessness or maybe even burnout as we feel acted upon rather active agents. Think of the last time you did something that made you feel alive and gave you a sense that you were doing something that truly mattered to you. What is it that you were doing??

ALSO READ | Bringing social justice to our schools

Loitering: When I asked Shyla, what had helped her to step out of the hamster wheel, she introduced me to the idea of “cosmic insignificance” that she had read about in Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). She said, “Don’t you think we take ourselves and our stay on this earth too seriously? We are like a blip in the history of humankind? Even if we do something truly remarkable, two generations down will not remember us. Isn’t the cosmic insignificance of our life enough for us not to give a damn? The indifference of the universe challenges our ideas on inefficiency, productivity and white-knuckling it out.” It was a truly liberating perspective as somewhere in knowing our insignificance, we can find so much peace in our imperfection and impermanence. What are the tiny, small ways you might want to opt out of the highway of life to find more scenic routes?

Story continues below this ad

I grew up in the mountains where rambling and loitering was the way of life. So I struggle with the fast pace of urban life and need lots of aimless time when I just do nothing. It’s in these white spaces that we find our joyous epiphanies, the “Aha” moments and where sparks of life happen.

And that is what I am taking to the new year – gathering experiences not things, opting out and aimless loitering.

(Shelja Sen is a narrative and family therapist, writer, co-founder of Children First. In this column she curates the know-how of the children and youth she has the honour of working with. Email her at shelja.sen@childrenfirstindia.com)

‘Grave insult to wounded people’: Cong lashes out at PM Modi amid his first Manipur visit

India12 hr ago

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Manipur for the first time since ethnic violence hit the state in May 2023, the Congress on Saturday called it a “farce, tokenism, and a grave insult to a wounded people”.

View all shorts

Live Blog