Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Are we living?

Today its 2 days after our second wedding anniversary and i started rethinking about the series of happenings in our life, in general about lives of any two techies

I started wondering ,if in the process of running for future we have forgotten living in present.

Work was earlier a part of our daily chore but now work and life have become two disjoint sets. Most of us are ending up in the mire of working-earning-working
but are we living?

We are all building big houses but we do not have a home to live in.
A house becomes a home only when people reside in it.

Are we just co-existing? Most of us come onsite or work more hours to earn, to save for our future or to have better career prospects.But is this all life?

Why do we miss our childhood or college days? Why do we wait for a weekend? Why do we have monday blues?

Few questions like:

1. How many times we had spent a peaceful evening with our dear ones just for the sake of spending time. (Mind you,without discussing about project/office/housing loans etc. )?
2. Last time we spent eating/drinking a cup of tea together with our dear ones?
3. How many times have we taken our children to a normal park ( not the shopping malls etc) just for a walk?
4. How many of us have visited a normal industrial exhibition?
5. How many times, have we actually taken our parents to a hospital when they have fallen sick? ( not visiting them, staying aside and taking an appointment and taking them)

As a child , i clearly remember the following:

1. My Dad taking me to a public library
2. My mom buying summer games, sitting along with us and playing during the summer holidays
3. Visiting grand parents and relatives' homes during festivals/holidays.

4.Playing holi, flying kits, helping mom prepare home made sweets during festivals

Today they are all replaced by :

1.Enjoying weekend parties in office.
2.Sending E-greetings and splash colors & fly kites in emails.
3.Buying ready made sweets or take home a company gifted "Glittery diwali gift".
4.Buying a calling card to India to talk oversees.

The most frequent words which actually are dictating our
lives today are "Career prospects" , " EMIs", "Onsite opportunities", " increments".

Its become such a vicious circle that almost everyone is in it and the ones who are not are actually looked upon as exceptions. And since exceptions are a minority, they tend to incline with the rule and enter the same vicious circle.

I am not an anti - IT person , nor am I a critic. In fact I love my job and I'm happy with the amount of opportunities IT has created and the economic changes IT has brought into the society but at the same time I wanted to remind each of us that tomorrow, when we are 40 or 60 years in age and we want to pen down sweet memories in our lives, the dairy would stop at the point when our jobs have started and the actual life has stopped.

3 comments:

Zephyr said...

This is something every IT professional can relate to !!

Navya said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Navya said...

Such a wonderful insight about the current problem every Engineering/IT professional is facing these days!And Gauthami, I can proudly say that though I was born in mid 80s I didnt miss the wonderful childhood memories which many of the youngsters miss, as I see them spending time with gadgets, social networking sites more than meeting people and feel they are having a good time!

Keep writing and I really liked the way you put forth the thoughts in your mind!