Things change. They have to. It is the law of nature. But, sometimes change can be an illusion. Just sometimes, we like to believe that things have changed when they really haven’t. It is easier that way, especially since it helps us feel better about our mistakes and shortcomings.
Life today is much more complex than it was, let’s say, fifteen or twenty years ago. The number of decisions that we have to take on any given day is staggering. From the kitchen to the office, everything has changed. But, has it really?
I used to have this discussion with my dad, where I said that things have really changed in the last twenty years. On the face of it who can deny that? But, my father used to tell me, with a smile, that things really hadn’t changed as much as I thought. At the time, I could never imagine how my father could not see difference between the 1980s and the 2000s. I used to point out to him the number of things that had changed, and he still wouldn’t agree with me.
But, recently, after a tiring day at work, I was thinking about this change in our lives. I was tired, physically and emotionally, from the deadlines I had to meet and from the various responsibilities I had assumed, and it seemed to me that it was simply too much for one man.
Then, I realized that though so much has changed, there are things that have not changed, and in all likelihood will never change.
A man has always had twenty four hours’ worth of time in a day and there is only so much that a person can do in this time. One can say that the number of things that a person can do with this time has increased exponentially, but even today, as in the earlier times, the number of things that the happy man or the successful man does with his time are limited.
Those who understand this simple fact are able to be happy and even successful, and here I am making a distinction between happy and successful because, I think, happy is a state of mind, and success is the state of a person relative to the society he is living in. It is easy to believe that because things have changed so much, the world around us has become too much for us. But, if we are able to see beyond the change and focus on the things that really matter, I think, we will be able to understand that at the end of the day, all we need to do is get the basics right, and other things will take care of themselves.
Here, I would also like to add a few words about why I am writing this. It is not because I am an expert at this, and I am writing this to share with you a secret that I have found. I am writing this because I am making mistakes and learning from them, and as I do that I want to share it with you and maybe you can add your thoughts and experiences to mine, so that we can learn together.
After all, no man is an island.
(Image: Craig Parylo from freeimages.com)
What do you think?