A lot of us, including myself, are living a race, not life. We wake up every morning, with newfound enthusiasm and gear up to chase our goals. For some, it’s money, some career, some stability, some passion, some happiness. In pursuit of all this, we lose sight of all the wonderful moments and things we do away with.
Haven’t we all secretly thanked the pandemic for bringing us closer to our families and making us cherish the little things? Ironically, we are away from each other, yet together.
I’m no different. I struggle with sitting idle. I’m over critical of my unproductive phases. I weigh the time at hand and how much I’m able to make of it. Even during a break, I catch myself thinking of what’s next. Weird but sometimes, that calms my anxious self down. I like being in control of my life; uncertainties scare me. It’s ironic because I understand that uncertainties are inevitable; they add meaning to life, the surprise element. But hey, that’s what denial is, right?
Even though I know life will always reveal its plan B to me, I seek the satisfaction of at least having a plan. At 20 something, just like any other millennial, I’m caught between ‘living in the moment’ and ’20s are for the grind.’ Trust me, walking on that rope is harder than expected.
I remember waking up with excruciating pain behind my neck, radiating to my right and below.
First thought – pillow troubles.
I lay motionless, desperately trying to turn to my sides, wriggling to find a comfortable position. I had to catch a few more hours of sleep before work. There wasn’t anything that I could do, to make it better. To make the pain go away.
I lay there for a few more hours, wishing it was nothing but just a rough night’s sleep. Like every time, life proved me wrong. There I lay, struggling to even hoist myself up on my sides and sit. Even the slightest movement hurt.
I let out a shout for help which cost me a visit to the Ortho. Those who know me well, know how much I hate going to the doctor. Being scared of needles is one thing, what I fear more is facing the truth.
Doctors have the uncanny ability of serving you the bitter truth buried in a nicely iced cake – sweet at first, but eventually hard to digest. And I’m sure you’ll agree, nobody likes being called out, even in the most euphemistic way. Even when they know they are ruining themselves.
The visit reaffirmed what I already knew. Being a workaholic was taking a toll on my neck, back and evidently my life. 3 days or more of complete bed rest, he prescribed. Believe it or not, the first thing I could think of was, ‘ What about the task list I had set myself for today?’ I had already mailed my boss a long list of tasks the previous night, and now I had to deal with postponing them for THREE DAYS – 72 HOURS LATER.
I had been strictly advised against even sitting up unless it was to eat or to use the loo. And I dreaded the thought of laying on the bed for 72 full hours with barely anything to do, except stare at my clear white ceiling and the dirty fan.
The unsupervised adult in me kept checking on my colleagues, catching up on meetings, reaching out to friends and what not to stay on top of the updates. I know, I know, I wasn’t supposed to do that, but hey? How else do you calm the nerves of someone who gets guilty of some me-time?
Also, the FOMO is real.
That got me wondering, ‘how much of our lives actually revolve around work?‘
All of us are chasing something. A dream. While that’s part of the bigger plan, what’s the price we pay for the present?
We’ve reached a point where burnouts are more common than being creative. Life has become a constant exchange of ‘eye rolls’ and ‘I’m tired’ memes. We’re on the top of marketing trends but losing out on making the moments in life count. It takes a hard blow for us to realize that we have very little time.
Time to laugh. Time to love. Time to live.
These three days have taught me that breaks aren’t that bad after all. Once in a while doing nothing, is actually doing something. And health definitely triumphs over everything.
In fact, this boring bed rest has even pushed me to write this blog after a hiatus. I read my favorite advertiser once say,
”If you have to overcome a creative block, write about an experience; spruce it up!”
Well, I definitely didn’t spruce my experience up, but I for sure learnt how to overcome my creative block amongst many other things.
Most importantly, every once in a while I have to hit the pause button on life.
If not, one day it’ll halt and then there’ll be no fast forward or rewind.
And you, if you’ve read it this far, I want you to take that break too. Work will happen, you can conquer your dreams – but life? That’s lived once. And that’s when you’re healthy and alive.
On that note, here’s the cliched, I hope you are staying positive and testing negative sign off.
On a more serious note – PAUSE. BREATHE. And SIT STRAIGHT, PLEASE!