Generation Gaps

“You know, when we were young, our only way of communicating with each other was if we were both home and both had a landline. Otherwise we were sort of lost in our own worlds”.

The young girl looked up from her mobile phone.

She was astounded by the truth of her grandfather’s words. She lived in an age where you could communicate with anyone anywhere in a matter of seconds. She didn’t know what it was like to not have a phone in hand and for her it was unthinkable to not be able to find out at any given time where anyone was and what they were doing. Mostly because her generation voluntary gave out that information online.

“So what happened if you wanted to find out about someone but didn’t want them to know?” she asked coyly.

“Well, you would have to ask someone who knew them too”.

“But what if you didn’t want anyone to know?”

“Like stalking?” her grandfather put it frankly.

“Well, sort of…” she blushed.

“There was no such thing in my time. If you’re relationship broke with someone, you tried to fix it. And if that didn’t work then you just got out of touch with them. And that was the end of it”.

The girl said nothing. She looked at her grandfather trying to imagine what that was like. Her generation was used to stalking each other on social media and getting obsessed with each other’s posts, overanalyzing, overthinking and overstressing. Everything in exaggeration. What was it like to not have to think about all this? To simply not care? To be calm?

Her grandfather was almost 100. He would still go out for long walks and had the patience of a mule.

She was agitated by even a fly’s buzz.

One time she had asked him if he never worries about anything. His reply was: “would it help?”

“To be calm is the highest achievement of the self” – Zen proverb

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Dispersing energy

There is a quote that helps us remember that we need to devote our energy into the things that matter. There are many sayings, in fact, but this one is the most emphatic: “If you can solve your problem then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?” Clever, no?

Think about it. There are so many quotes we share in our lives daily, reminding us to “don’t worry, be happy”. For example, “the 5 by 5 rule:  If it’s not going to matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset by it”.

We tend to overreact to things that don’t matter as much as we think. And we often drain ourselves of the energy to react effectively to the things that do matter and need our attention.

If we were given life to disperse energy, then why not make that diffusion a positive one? Why do we spend so much time with negative energy, complaining, moaning and lamenting? Wouldn’t our lives be better if we focused more on smiling, on being kind and sensitive, on putting ourselves in each other’s shoes once in a while, on trying to understand the other’s perspective, on being a ray of light in a world that insists on dark shadows?

Think about it.

A missing drop

Nathaniel woke up in anguish. There was so much to do and so little time. What if he didn’t complete everything today? What if something went wrong? What if…. There was so much negativity in his thoughts that it was as if he had failed in his mission already. He worried too much and exhausted his energy trembling over things that could be unsuccessful, rather than focusing on what he could do to accomplish what he had set his mind upon.

Natalia was also like that. Every time she met someone new, be it as a friend, an acquaintance or a love interest, she would agonise over things that could break the relationship apart. As such, she could never really enjoy the time she spent with these people. And she never managed to build upon her human relations.

It is natural for people to worry. We do it all the time. Parents worry about their children constantly, no matter how old they may be. Couples are concerned about each other when either is not well. Friends support each other through the hard times too.

We worry about things we can’t control, and those we can. And it is really useless to go about telling people not to worry because unless that person decides by themselves to change their perspective, there is not much you can do about it.

We worry because it is a way of showing we care. That we are not insensitive to other people, to the world in general. We may worry too much at times, about things that don’t matter. And we will always find other people who have far greater troubles and worries than ours. But all we can really do is remind ourselves that among the 7 billion people on this planet, we are but a small drop in a vast ocean, but, like Mother Theresa had said, “that ocean would be less because of that missing drop”. Wouldn’t you prefer a calm sea, rather than a turbulent one?

So, whatever the situation, we need to believe and hope that everything will be OK in the end. We simply need to work towards achieving the positive, rather than realizing the negative that we’ve created in our head.

“Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but it never gets you anywhere”.

 

Also part of Daily Prompt: Drop