Sitting in my chair, here writing this when sleep, friends and work call out to me, I think to myself – is all of this worth it? My friends don’t like me anymore, work keeps getting brutal, academics go on as if nothing has changed and all my other commitments almost always make me choose a side. And I finally realise the power and influence that something like sleep can have on you. Cause for any person in such a situation, this is an answer that can satisfy the only possible selfish desire you have at this point – physiological ones in nature. Now do not get me wrong – I know a lot of this has to do with communication, assertiveness, confidence etc. But doing it in front of those you care about, those you value and appreciate for their opinions and to the responsibilities you have can truly cripple a person. The simple reason rests on the fact that you care about each of them independently, in different contexts and different situations. But they all believe that your care is shown over one more than the other. And the other reason is because your arrogance and stubbornness tells you that you can handle it. That there is no obstacle such as time and space. That you can be everywhere and so you promise this to everyone. Forward to two weeks, and you’ve never felt this afraid, this tired, this sad. The only person you can blame is yourself. Their comments on you seem so right.
I have a lot of things left to do for a lot of reasons and for a lot of people. Simply put, sleep seems the only reasonable thing that I can do without any adverse consequences and even this is getting cut short by the demands that emerge every day. They believe I can be there for them and take care of these things. That I am some sort of saviour who can change things because of my presence and concern. I never liked to admit it when my parents told me that people find it easy to use me cause I like to take responsibility for a person’s life once they ask me for help. All these were once boasts I could make, but now they are hoarse words, that have landed me in a pool filled with different deadly animals that can pounce for any number of people. The biggest difficulty here I learnt is the need of practical application of work-life balance in the context of each person, when they realise that all these concepts they learnt in the books do not matter for zilch. I can remember all the points and the importance and the techniques that have always been there to help the blossoming adolescent make the best of his/her life and help groom him/her to become a successful young adult in a very intense world. But did anyone ever tell them how difficult it is to say no, or to allocate the care that comes from your heart to people?
These things mostly come with age, my mother tells me. Nowadays, whenever I do get the time, my parents fill up the void with gyaan and advice. I can’t say no so I listen. And I hear more conceptual knowledge that can really get nods from people who have never gone through it or not so at least at that point of head-nodding. I realised that even though my mom has gone through these moments before (and I faced the brunt of it when it did happen), her advice was limited to concepts not because she was ignorant or forgetful, but because we are never fully taught how to articulate our feelings and thoughts during those moments into words, ideas and principles. It is like a disease that comes, we seek treatment and it goes, not realising the role the medicine played, the relaxation helped and what our body did. Such knowledge is crucial because it forms the basis for our advice that we give to others.
If I needed conventional advice like the ones all of them give me to do away with my justifications, reasons and defences (cause what else do I have at this point left?) I could just resort to reading random quotes by great authors on these topics that mean as much as roadside excretion does to the average walker (only noticeable when it’s around; never a permanent thought). None of them have provided advice on the exact hell you can go through or the actual, real-life actions that can be done to help you get through this. And at this point I realised that all the advice I have learnt and have also given is the same – useless gyaan that works best only in the plane of words and ideas and never through action or construction. It was an enlightening experience. A good work-life balance is obviously a must. It has benefits and boons that most moral science textbooks let only positive psychology texts can tell you. But how to get there is often a topic that remains shady because most books either focus on vague abstract concepts and ideas, or they focus on research – both an attempt to secure n audience and not to seem so extreme.
This fear has always been the problem with most advice givers. Including myself into this category, it is safe to say that they are scared of alienating or frustrating people with answers that may not work by giving answers that do not work but tell you that doing something will definitely work. What help is that going to do when I have to sit here reflecting all the learnings I have and ensure that those around me never have to go through this same hell that I went through. That I have to come up with actual actions that may or may not work at least giving clarity and concreteness to those around me. And with this realisation, I say adieu to this blog and to the bond we have established over this semester. It has been a cathartic and transformative experience to write about applying positive psychology in your life and how its concepts are so relevant to us. I thank the reader for sticking with me through this and hope any learning experience that can be gleaned from this is helpful and if nothing as such can or did not happen, then at least some enjoyment was there. I must now go back to the real world and seek answers to more questions, answers that can truly change lives by pointing people towards actions rather than more thoughts.
