The never-ending staircase: One thing, the other and next…
You aim for something, work for it day in and day out, leave no stone unturned to master it, and finally, you achieve it. The adrenaline spike is quite appealing. It gives you ‘wiings’; makes you smile, chortle and relax for a few moments.
But that's it? Probably not!! You confront the next goal, aim for it, work hard and get it; the perpetual cycle goes on and on…
A deeper look at our lives reveals that, more or less, it is all about conquering one quest, the other and then the other. Most of us don’t even celebrate our first victory, how big or small it is, and plunge on to the next battle. In fact, many of us are ready to suffer the turmoil again rather than being satisfied, or rather happy, with what we possess.
This doesn’t at all implies that we stop aiming for something big (maybe we wanna refine our definition of ‘big’) and pass some leisure time. That’s not what life’s meant for. If sleeping, eating, mating and defending will become our primary tasks, then the profound cerebral capacity humans have got is, unfortunately, wasted terribly.
At the same time, treating life as a series of steps of a never-ending staircase brings misery. The fugacious joy of climbing one step is soon surpassed by the fear of failure of reaching the other. And guess what? Most people would choose to go through this calvary (yes! it’s really intense) just to fit in the societal structure and people’s dogmatic belief system.
A research study at the University of Illinois, congruent with thousands other studies across the world, confirms that taking breaks is essential; not only does the brain relaxes and strengthens the neural connections during that time, which we call memory, but one’s emotional state improves substantially. Working perpetually gives us a sense of gratification of achieving something worthy; unfortunately, that's a false belief — productivity hampers, creativity is destroyed. Probably the most dangerous thing in this world is to have this false belief of knowing things, and knowing them completely. This is much worse than not knowing anything.
Life has never been, and shouldn't be, a checklist of things to be completed. In fact, for some people, that checklist never ends. Even if we achieve all, or at least most of it, we are fundamentally heading towards our grave. Right? Well, this might seem a bit abstract and off the discussion, but delving deep into life’s reality reveals that our countdown starts the time we’re born on this planet. You can’t reverse it. No one ever has.
But if that's the case, is not doing anything and nurturing mediocrity is meaningful? You and I both know that that’s not the solution. There have to be times when you work like hell (you have to), get even more out of yourself, and actually contribute to something meaningful. One has to step out of one’s comfort zone to make the uncomfortable things make comfortable and then expand it further.
Now here’s the catch. There will be situations when the work will be strenuous, demanding, and exhausting. It will drive you crazy and break the hell out of you. But if it's meaningful to someone, or to you at least, it won’t bring you the misery I am talking about. Rather, every day of yours will start with challenges you love to be a part of. They’ll grind you, but not your passion and vision. They’ll be tough, but definitely not tougher than your will power.
And when you conquer those challenges, those meaningful, worthy challenges, you won’t start working on the next (challenge), but rather embrace what has been done, at least for some time.
The checklist won’t be there, and life will be a series of learning experiences. People (it's abstract but true!!) tend to say, “ The goal of my life is to achieve peace and calmness…”; well, what’s the point of achieving peace at the end of your life when you weren’t peaceful during your whole life. That's the utmost misery one can bring upon themselves.
“Work gives meaning to your life”, said Stephen Hawking many years back. He didn’t talk about the depressing work you do every single day which besieges you. Rather, he promoted the idea of meaningful work; work which does not set discrete goals in one’s life, rather inspires him or her to just create something wonderful for the world and other people.
“Life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement”
To be truly honest, it's important to strike the balance between working and having some time to reflect upon what has been done, how meaningful it is to me, and what impact it is creating on this world. Even if the impact is small, it still accrues up gradually. Doing things and living life for oneself will give the person all the materialistic success one aspires for, but true satisfaction will be unfortunately missing.
In the end, don’t follow the checklist, in fact, don’t even make one. Have a great vision, work for it one step at a time and love the process, not the goal. That brings more joy than aiming for the next set-point ever will.
If that was useful, give up that ‘outstanding’ clap and Follow me for more. Do comment/share if you have something to communicate. I am indeed on other alphabet soup of social media as well. If you are too, let's connect on those platforms as well: Personal Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn.
