Tag: society

  • MY RELATIONSHIP WITH CHANGE

    MY RELATIONSHIP WITH CHANGE

    Recently, my relationship with a certain word has been in a difficult position. I thought it had mended after struggling for so long over the years, but was found otherwise. The word is “change”.

    My journey to reach where I stand currently has been quite long. I started from being the boy who wanted a few constants in his life forever, and then I was the wreck, who seethed at the state of those constants after almighty time shaped them beyond familiarity then. Finally, I was able to understand that the “not so familiar” constants then, were not the only part of the equation that determine the changes. It took me quite some time to accept, that I changed too, which also changed the equation, making those constants more distorted than they were. Only then I was able to make my peace with the changing relationships with the people around me. With the fact, that how a friend for whom I switched a school once, is now a friend whose profile I find at times in my IG while scrolling. Or the girl for whom I travelled 400 km in a day once, is now someone I accidentally skipped wishing on her b’day. I am not saying that all these changes happened because of them or me. Change happens due to multiple reasons, but we are one of those reasons too. So when things start to feel not the same, the first thing that needs to be checked is us.

    Before diving more into it, I need to clarify a basic thing which many times people assume about change. Change is neither good nor bad. Change is change, like a fact. The outcomes of it are what hit people differently. And because the outcomes have their relevance aligned with the people they impact; they can be molded by those people themselves. If tomorrow rain occurs in the middle of the advent of summer, which would be a change, its outcome to someone like me who travels daily would be pleasant weather to ride my bike in, but for a farmer who was waiting to harvest his/her crop over somewhere else, would possibly cry tears of blood. So the question that asks to be answered here is, how blaming the change can be the solution to the problem if the outcome depends on who took the impact? You cannot control the change. What you can control is always the outcome.

    Coming back to my difficult relationship with change, it has been in this state due to the perceived meaning and notion around it. My life currently has a lot of factors that have contributed to the changes occurring in it. These changes are as varied as an increase in my curiosity about the social scenarios around me, to being in a relationship with an amazing person, to changes at work, and many more. These changes are connected through many different threads with different outcomes for me and people affected by me. As the outcomes differ for everyone, the impact they have on everyone is different too. But the difference between outcomes and changes are not very clear in the eyes of people, which has put all the burden the outcomes were supposed to carry, on the changes themselves.

    Tell me honestly, if you never have been a part of a similar conversation, when a person in your group has recently started seeing someone, as a result of which they spend less time with you, and the talk that happens in the group is, “Since they have been in the relationship, he/she is changed. He/she doesn’t even hang around much.” The simple outcome, which was the lack of availability of the person, which due to any reason was an issue, is directed instead to the change. Even I have been a part of such conversations. Change is crucial to be understood to deal with the outcome, but that’s where the role of the change ends. It’s the outcome that needs to be addressed. At times there are some outcomes that can only be modified if the change itself is modified, or is changed itself, even then, the process has to be the same.

    My relationship with the word started straining when the people around me, especially the ones closest to me, started negating the fact that the outcomes that they are being affected by, are not due to the changes, or me, but them. This stressed relationship between them and the outcomes is being transferred to my relationship with the changes, knowingly or unknowingly. It is also having different kinds of impact on me, both short term and long term, making me question if what I am doing is enough, where I do not even know what I am supposed to do. I find myself consistently defending the changes I am proud of, and that is not a healthy thing at all. When I start thinking about it from a third person’s perspective, it terrifies me to imagine what others would go through in the same scenario. I deem myself to be a pretty confident person, but I find myself questioning my own decisions and what other possible paths I could have taken, leading to even questioning if the changes in question are right for me in the first place. It is like carrying a burden that is not even yours, for no reason, and it is not helping anyone.

    Which brings us to another question, to what extent are you responsible for mending the relationships of the people around you with the outcomes of the changes? This question does not have a simple answer, still to put it in a statement addressing the utmost priority, I would say, to the extent beyond which it does not have any deteriorating effect on you. You can only help someone if you are in the right headspace. With that sentiment taking top priority, there is no expiry date to the duration or maximum capacity barrier to the load you can offer support to. It requires patience and self-belief to navigate through it.

    This piece was a part of therapy for my relationship with the changes in my life that I needed to put into a proper perspective, and I think it has solved its purpose. For anyone who reads it, I would like to urge you to keep asking yourself about the distinction and work towards outcomes of the changes, so that you and people around you could absorb changes, as they intend to be. After all, change is the only constant in this world.

  • HUMANITY OF HUMANS

    I have often wondered where we are going, as humans. We had our ancestors from the missing link which resulted as a split between us and our distant cousins, apes and monkeys. But what is the next step of the evolution for us? Humans are known to be social animals. In the future would this still stand to be true? To understand about this textbook human, we need to move out of metro cities. To a city, where human history had flourished and the traces of the human civilization could be found easily.

    The city I’ve been recently to, Agra, is pretty ancient. There is something about these cities, these old, congested, haphazard structures of wood and bricks woven by narrow lanes, shabby markets. It brings forth a certain charm and sends calmness through eyes to the brain, finally reaching and soothing the heart. Suddenly, I started feeling as if I am home. Yes, looks can be deceiving. Though the heart can resist the playful visuals, what reinforces this homely belief is, strangely, the people of this city.

    Strangely, not because this is something unexpected, that genuine human beings who live as a community cease to exist. Just because we don’t get to see it pretty often. Specially in the kind of cities I am living in, metro cities. Again, not because the people living in metros don’t have the humane touch any more. They just don’t have the time, to be in touch with it. Its funny and ironic at the same time, that the cities which pull people in, breathe aspirations into them, seem to seep away the humane tendencies of humans itself.

    Many might argue that I am wrong. And I might be, if we see it from their perspective. The humans of metros have set a humanity standard for themselves according to which they measure their own humanity. It’s like the coffee you store in your fridge. You use it in tiny quantities, and use that standardized quantity to measure the number of servings you could squeeze out of that tiny bottle.

    But don’t you think that humanity was supposed to be like a seed? To plant it, water it, nurture it and get more seeds, thus the cycle continues. The usage should lead to its increase, instead of being used miserly as something on the verge of extinction. The evolution of humans have been going in a different way. We have been evolved from animals. Using a broader term because it’s not the physical aspect I am trying to focus on. Therefore, from the existence of raw instincts and emotions, to a refined being with logical and intricate emotions and thought processes. The next step of evolution however seems to have taken a direction which involves the lack of emotions, more of rational logic, which are guided by circumstantial environments.

    To use simpler words, animals > humans > robots.

    And the more interesting part is that the society today could also be divided into these three categories, just on the basis of their societal quotient. Maybe that is the reason of the social unrest and an increase in level of dis-accord, because on a fundamental level, we have started to be different from each other. Just due to different level of compassion levels towards others.

    Now when I read it out loud, it is more funny than interesting. Because this variation of level depends upon the geographical location of a person. The humans are merely adopting in accordance to their environment. It’s the geography that has been evolving. With the majority of young aged population moving to the metro cities and their expanding boundaries, the quantity of robots over humans is going to increase. Not only that will boost the number of robots, but the expansion of metro cities in to neighboring suburban areas would lead to a slow conversion of the geographies into metropolitan culture, and the evolution of the society in the entirety.

    Maybe, the Agra I know today, won’t exist tomorrow. Or similar cities as such. The structures would be there as a reminder of the timeline to which it belonged, but nothing to remind the kind of humans that once existed. Some scientist will just come up with a hypothetical theory, regarding where these new breed of robots evolved from.

    But then U.S is going to have a new president soon enough. That result debunks this entire robot evolution thought and lets me sleep peacefully at night.