Skip to main content

Time to stop stalking, talking and living around others’ lives!

Very recently the nation witnessed the excitement and thrill of a celebrity wedding! From waiting for pictures to be uploaded, to making quick memes and posts on it, many of us were engrossed and obviously indirectly involved thoroughly in the wedding. Ironically while the couple getting married was staying at a safe distance away from people, we played the role of a typical religious neighbor who gets involved in any matter in the padosi’s house even when they are not expected to be involved. Out of the excitement yet? Or stalking the next wedding already?
Unfortunately in times today we are exposed to more than the required amount of information about others lives. From what they ate to what they wore or achieved we know it all! By this, we imagine a picture-perfect life that we feel others are leading and obviously, try projecting ours as the same. The vicious cycle continues and in this tug of war for posting the best updates online, we all lose a bit of ourselves everyday offline.
I was having a healthy discussion with a colleague recently, where we were imagining and talking about life when there was no social media buzz. Wow! Imagine walking down the lane without scrolling through your phone, imagine sitting idle in a café and waiting for someone without the constant stare at those bright screens, imagine looking around in a beautiful scenic place and living it, rather than capturing it, imagine getting up in the morning, and getting up to yourself instead of a red notification, tempting you to open it and read it. The crux is when the social media hadn’t taken over us; we focused more on our own lives than the lives of others, we focused more on living instead of constantly looking out for our next update.
Image result for paparazzi cartoon
The human brain is an amazing organ which gets trained the way we train it, we can fool it easily and we can use it just the way we want to! Remember how a very popular movie mentioned training it for “All for well”.  In times today by the means of our constant interest in people around us, we are training it the most for getting involved in everybody but ourselves! With every like, love and wow that we hit we are silently telling our minds, that “All is well with everyone except me” It’s time to stop paying heed to this eyewash. It’s time to be the wise circus masters for our brains and shut it up before it gets too late. It’s time to unlearn some things which we have learned over a past decade and relearn them for our own good. It’s time to stop the entire culture of stalking, talking and living around others lives.

 Let’s start living our lives outside those screens, let’s start looking at things without those filters, let’s get more real and let’s focus on things that truly matter. And yes as far as the padosi’s house is concerned, of course, it’s entertaining to peep into it but only and as long as we do it while going to or returning back from our own work, instead of constantly hovering over them from our balconies!
Vandita Mishra
Published in Hindustan times, Lucknow edition newspaper
on 29.11.2018 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Annoyed by children on board? This read is for you

A recent Instagram post by a well-known celebrity writer read “They should give away free birth control pills on all airlines as a public service.” I juggled for a long time to understand what it meant, but couldn’t until I saw the only hashtag the writer had used as a caption beneath, #annoyingchildrenonboard. This post came after almost a week of relaxing and luxurious holiday that he had in Thailand. As most of the posts by this writer are relatable, at times funny and witty, it took me a while to comprehend what he had written. How could he post such a thing ? I thought, and scrolled through the comments section. In the comments I saw outpouring negativity for little children and their parents inside airplanes. “It’s so irritating!” one comment read, “I wanted to sleep peacefully on my three-hour flight, but the child behind just couldn’t shut up. Why do people produce when they can’t teach their children basic etiquette!!!” “So relatable,” read another, “an annoying baby was cryin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Health beyond COVID-19!

None of us had imagined that we would ever see a crisis in health as huge as the one that we are witnessing currently.   One disease and the entire world has come to a standstill. But then, what is life if we can predict it? Coronavirus, which has shaken everyone with its massive spread, has slowly moved towards community spread in India. Reasons for its relatively slower rise in numbers here can be various. The timely and stringent actions taken by the government, our immunity to survive it due to poor overall hygiene of the country; or the relatively larger number of infections that we already face. However, fear of rising numbers remains, because we are a densely populated land. The losses that COVID has caused are many and grave but then, there is one good thing that it has brought to us as a country. It is our efforts to improve our existing healthcare system. It will be premature to say if these efforts are temporary or permanent but it’s very positive to see how w...
Post a Comment
Read more

How many years do you think constitute a generation gap?

Well! It was during one of a conversation with a colleague of mine that we started talking about the changes in attitude of a slightly younger age group nowadays. The slightly younger I realized was not more than a five year younger to me or the average adult. While I could still connect a little more to the way these slightly younger people think, she couldn’t! While I still felt that I was one of them in some ways, she felt she was a generation behind from them. Things around us are changing way too fast! In terms of social media for example, by the time you get used to Instagram, the world may call you outdated saying that “Snapchat” is the new in. By the time you master one particular technique or idea in your professional field, someone who joined a year later to you may come up saying that this is an old-way to work! Till a few years back where a range of 25-28 was considered ideal to get married and have a child, today most people have their own definition of “settlement”, w...
Post a Comment
Read more