Sep 15, 2019
Dear Anxiety
Sub: Weekend is here!
I hope you had a great weekend. I thought of writing to you on a Sunday evening this time. I know many of my friends would be reading this tonight and would already be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the morning we all dread. The term “Monday morning blues” has become extremely popular in recent times. It has become such a crucial part of our culture that it has become a norm for the young and not so young to share stories of how dreaded the Monday mornings can be.
Not so long ago, I used to work out of a bustling city Bangalore [India] and I remember very clearly how my friends and colleagues would excitedly wish each other a Happy Weekend. Four subtle events comprised of what I clearly remember as the weekend behaviour.
1) A jubilant and celebratory tone in which everyone wished each other the mark of the start of a weekend.
2) An exciting discussion/exploration of what could be the perfect way to celebrate the weekend.
3)A dull morose and an uneventful entry to the office on a Monday morning.
4)A display of how awesome and memorable the weekend was in the history of your existence.
It might loosely remind you of a prisoner set free on a weekend and then captured again on a monday morning. The prisoner is all too happy to live and breathe fresh air and drown himself in the ocean of sense pleasures so as to forget and delete the pains gathered carefully over the week.
You play a major role in our lives- Anxiety. You make us feel so low and helpless all through the week, that at the end of the week all that we seek meekly is pleasure and release from temporary pain. You force us to believe a lie — the apparent lack of life from Mon to Fri and a sudden appearance of life on a Friday night. Also what is quite unfortunate is the sudden reappearance of this unique “fright” of a Monday morning on “Sunday Evening”. Even before the weekend has ended the “Monday Morning Blues” begun. As if it is a continual process of deleting Mondays to Fridays repeatedly and only saving the weekend for my perusable memory.
So imagine meeting a friend after a span of 3 years, all that you have to discuss are 156 weekends. The rest of life is all deleted and not worth discussing. So imagine you watched an average of 2 movies per month, you could discuss the 75 odd movies you have been to. Also if you have been on a weekend trip once a quarter, you have 12–15 trips to talk about and finally if you have been to your hometown or attended a few marriages you discuss those and then suddenly you remember a few weekends spent at work to cover the urgent needs of your client. This immediately would fill you up with a deep sense of regret and remorse for further losing out on your life. And now imagine discussing a life spent 30 years building a career. All that you would be left with is packets of life, not life itself. Deeply remorseful and full of regrets at spending a life that was only focussed on the weekends.
Hence, I write to you today. Oh Anxiety, you have this effect on most of us facing a Monday. Some of us cover it up, give it a fancy name. Some of us wear a garb of ambition and justify the acts and others just blame it on the nature of work and corporates. Some of us simply continue to drown ourselves in the noise of pleasure so as to ignore the screaming self within asking for a sense of calm purpose and direction in life. Who cares about direction or purpose when all that I can currently see is a Monday approaching at the speed of light that I cannot escape. What essentially am I trying to escape from? What?
The term Occupation is derived from the word Occupy which essentially means to fill or take up (space or time). Essentially, the word occupation essentially means a job/task/hobby that fills your awareness/focus over a period of time. We all know that empty brain is a devil’s workshop and Occupation provides us with a way to work around the devil [just found another name for You] such that we get to spend our time meaningfully. Please note, I did not use the word effectively. I am not talking about productivity and leaving your mark on the planet. I am just talking about personal meaning and purpose. So here you have it — You could be a Waiter, Paramedic, Dentist, Train conductor, Nurse, Electrician, Doctor, Businessman. You name it, you could be anyone or could do anything to spend your time that you feel positively meaningful and earn money out of our consistent pursuit. Imagine a meaningful occupation like train conductor — You could be full of stories of different people you get to meet daily and different interactions some funny and some not so funny but all adding so much meaning and value to your life. You could wake up on a Monday morning hoping to discover life as you check for tickets on the train.
Dear Anxiety, You make us feel hollow and lifeless because we no longer seek what we ought to seek out of our occupations — meaning. Most of us are here to prove something to someone, to make a mark, to possess something, to get somewhere in life. What we don’t get is that all of this is a by-product of every occupation you indulge yourself in. You get to serve others and eventually leave a mark, earn a fortune, touch some lives, get somewhere in life. But if your only goal is to get somewhere in life without adding meaning through occupation, your occupation becomes the source of your stress and this is whereas Anxiety you leave your mark on us.
When was the last time you could impact someone who has a project in life? People who have projects fill their idle time with projects and they don’t have time for your dear friend. They fill their lives with activities that bring them closer to their project. They fail and this is where you raise your hood. Some of us succumb to your tricks and some, very few who have the courage and are filled with hope laugh at your antics and move ahead stronger with a deeper resolve. You have very little power over people living their lives with meaning and purpose. They fill their Mondays as well as their Sundays with purpose. The bad days at work help them get close to their projects as much as the good days at work. Projects are defined to be these tough endeavours which demand skill, effort, perseverance and patience. Who has time to indulge in your trickery one who has found joy in purposeful and meaningful work?
So I write you this Sunday, hoping some of my friends look forward to tomorrow hoping to move an inch forward towards their projects and turn tomorrow into a meaningful day. For others without a project, you have a field day torturing and luring them into deeper and deeper depths of helplessness and frustration. But, for how long? Eventually, even they will get to know your tricks and your false promises. They will start looking for deeper meaning and purpose in life. Until then you have your temporary permanence in their lives.
Our occupations are inherently meaningful and purposeful in nature. It is us who lose the perspective and fall trap to your meaningless banter in our heads that make us run the hamster wheel. Our lives are only as meaningful as we offer our presence to it. You steal our presence with future worries and insecurities and drive away meaning out of the present moment. Our present moment is an opportunity to move an inch towards our project and its meaningful pursuit is the most effective occupation of our energies and focus. Any amount of energy spent on pursuing your false worries and tensions is the time spent in making our lives hollow and meaningless. I hope more of us find meaning and purpose and work towards our projects. Fail. Fail grandly if needed but it still would have been a meaningful pursuit. May we all find joy, freedom, exhilaration and purpose in our Monday’s and peace and tranquillity in our Sunday’s.
Yours Courageously
Debanjan
