Hitting the pause button and transitioning
It’s the journey that matters,yet somehow goal becomes the driving force. It becomes so strong that we never get a chance to hit the cruise control button and enjoy the journey. I wonder if there is any cruise control at all.
I wish i had the special power of Tim( played by Domnhall Gleeson) in About Time by which he could relive every moment of his life multiple times through time travel. In each iteration he could enjoy nuances of each moment of his life and triviality of his worry . In last to credit scene he relives the day knowing he would win the case, knowing that he would happy at the end and he starts observing people and their little joys abundant here and there.
Today(hence the post, lest i forget) morning i had a weird dream. I am with my family dying to reach to airport to take a flight to a new city. We are all in a car , shouting and howling at each other for the right navigation. My dream goes hitech with a google search for estimated time of arrival. Worry index is now reaching for the sky. Yet neither the car is speeding nor are we taking any right direction. I am supper stressed. Suddenly without any reason( or that i forgot what exactly the reason was )we stopped. There i saw two majestic Mango trees with mangoes ripe as any mango could be. They were ripe to the extent of becoming red as apple. There were distinct patterns to mango outburst. While one tree was random outburst of mangoes in all direction the other had a design to it. Mangoes started as wreath wrapping the tree in an elliptical fashion going round just as a pageant would wear the winning title. Meanwhile i was wondering if I had just replaced Christmas tree a mango tree and the decorations with mangoes. Whatever it was , it was the most beautiful and delicious set of trees i had ever seen.
Somehow now the whole world stopped and my whole family had a new goal of getting to eat the mangoes. Our primal Monkey instincts kicked in. We were looking for all the sticks and all the ladders we could find to get hold of one of these mangoes. Luckily we get few of them and they were sweet as honey and then i woke up to a cool soothing morning with gentle breeze, a real reward in hot Indian Summer.
I suddenly realized,how important it is put life on auto mode for sometime and enjoy little breaks in our speeding life. Why its important to look for those halts in our journey towards our fatal ends and cherish few moments with our family. Degree to be attained, promotion to be got, funding needed, loan EMI to be paid, children to be raised. In all this those mango trees are lost in rear view mirror of our car. We keep on sacrificing our most prized present for an un-determinant tomorrow. I don’t know the quick solution to avoid this, but yes i am trying to.
I am on a break till i move to my next job. BTW I don’t have any pending offer yet.I am hitting the auto mode one for sometime. I am reading what i like, getting my writing skills improved upon( as evident from this scrappy post),learning what i always wanted to learn and spending sometime with my family.I am in Transition for my next journey but i hope i make the best out of it. If you are feeling burnt out in your job,take a break. You can always get another job,but not another life. By not being answerable to any one is a relief which you can only enjoy once you take the leap of faith and quit slogging.If this stint is successful, i would make it a habit of taking long unpaid breaks between jobs.
Hope to see you guys on the other side of my hiatus with an update on how it went. Till then back to enjoying my moment. Back to being Tim from “About Time”
