No Love. No Time. Story Of Our Lives

As a generation, we believe we deserve only the best. We believe in tangible achievements and the only way of life is to constantly run towards what we want with open arms and blinders on. We as a millennial generation are inundated with options and our new year’s resolution is often reduced to better cars and cell phones.

We don’t believe in compromises and we don’t let anything stop us from chasing our dreams; dreams that have been carefully chosen and designed to engulf us into a life of desires. Our obsession with the best of the material world has slowly invaded our personal lives. This constant search for something better has changed the very nature of relationships and is weakening the very foundation of the Indian social structure.

New is wow

A shiny new car, a hi-tech gadget or a high-end phone are all exciting while they are new. Once the shine goes away or the technology is outdated we replace them with new ones. That is exactly what we are doing to our relationships, replacing the not-so-old ones with something new and exciting. We go through the nervous excitement of meeting someone new, chatting and talking all night to meeting over drinks and dating followed by the infamous ‘we need to talk’ in a matter of months if not weeks or days and move on to the next best match. Listening to every story of the other person more than once, bores us. We like reminiscing about our casual fun moments, but don’t like to be with the person in the present for too long.

Control is good

We get queasy with the thought of dealing with a broken heart. We don’t like the feeling of our stomach in knots when love catches us by surprise and we definitely don’t like falling deep in love with someone because we fear that if we do, we might lose control. We plan our first conversations meticulously to fill the awkward silence of a new relationship. We don’t like being impulsive and we can’t handle change. We welcome someone new into our lives but only to the extent where it doesn’t invade our privacy. We don’t like them entering the inner sanctum of our lives.

Casual is sexy

Marriages are uncool in the age of open relationships and casual dating. The whole generation of urban youth has reduced serious relationships and marriages into a social evil. We often allude to friends with broken marriages and nasty breakups and make that the pretext for choosing the casual way. What we don’t talk about is the dissatisfaction and damage to a relationship arising out of unfulfilled expectations from a partner.

How can bringing in more indifference and detachment make our relationships better? We are yet to find an answer to that since open relationships and casual dating clearly isn’t helping our already stressful lives.

We are hypocrites

We love to brag about the freedom of no expectations and no real attachments. What we don’t reveal is — it’s not all hunky dory. We crowd our lives with too many dates and our phones with too many names. It’s a contingency plan for, an otherwise secluded life. So, the more the merrier. But nothing is foolproof. We sometimes find ourselves in moments when something big happens and we feel like sharing it with someone. We desperately go through the list of names and realize it’s not at all helpful. In that lonely moment we suddenly realise that those people never really knew enough of you or your life to be able to share that moment.

Is it all our fault?

Our work is 80% of our lives. Stress and pressure are the most commonly used words to describe our urban lives. While we cope with challenging work cultures and put ourselves constantly under pressure to adapt with rapidly changing social trends, the traditional cultural system looms over us. Phew! If this generation does not feel derailed then who will? We can’t ignore the change, so the best way of saving ourselves from meaningless casual relationships is to find the balance in our personal lives. Casual is not equivalent to peaceful. Peaceful is not equivalent to being single.

Instead of treating a relationship as a liability we need to revisit the reasons why, even if for a short time, we seek company. It’s all about going back to 3rd standard social studies where the text started with “Man is a social animal”. If naturally we were capable of living our lives detached from each other then languages would be redundant. So the good news is, we already are built for relationships. All we need to do is look within and accept our need for love.

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