GENERATION: CHANGING THINGS MORE FASTER

 CHANGING GENERATION

Once there was a group of friends, four friends. They went to Tokyo for vacation. Roaming on the streets of Tokyo they one thing. A tea-post and it was like an ancient tea-post following Zen ritual. They went inside and a big clay pot of water was waiting. A Japanese man came and said do-zo (welcome greetings in Japanese). They was their hands and sat down there. This Zen ritual was a bit strange. In that tea-post cellphones or any other gadgets were not allowed and only four can enter at a time, quite lucky friends!!

They sat and tea was served in clay cup (kulhads in India). There was pin drop silence and all enjoyed every sip of tea. This Zen Buddhist ritual is called cha-no-yu. And it is one of the best gift to Japanese.

Well, this was a short story which I read during my school time. With fast growing technology our life has also started running. At first it was running like horse, then racing cars, then bullet and now it has become even faster. And according to simple science if anything is thrown at a speed then gradually it catches fire. Like a shooting star it burns. And this is exactly what is happening in our life.

Actually today’s topic is on speed. Not that of automobile, bullet or speed of light in vacuum but it is about the speed of our lives. Nowadays we all want everything fast, starting from an instant tea bag to shopping, phones, internet, and many more. I had heard somewhere that it depends on us that how we use our technology? We use it for creating of just passing time? But no it’s not true exactly. We are checking phones frequently and according to a research a normal adult or any teenager checks his/her phone once in 15 minutes and that too without being conscious about it. What this means? We are simply being programmed. We are becoming slaves of our own gadgets.  

And with this increasing social media influence and that too with high data speed our mindsets are also on high speed mode. We want everything, every single thing right now. We all are in hurry. The moments we are born our parents wants us to go to school, then after school we want to get in college and then after college we want to get a job, after job, marriage then children and it goes on and on. We are in hurry of finding peace and what we forget is that we can’t get peace faster. It is something that comes from within. If we are alone or if we are sad we starts seeking for someone but we fail to know that joy is within us and we can’t get it from anywhere, anyone outside. And result is that stuffs like reading books, sports all are on extinction. A small Columbus wandering on his bicycle is lost on some unknown “cyber island”.

Friends meeting together, family gathering and all other people are not talking to each other but that are texting someone else. We are not saying if we like, if we dislike something. We are not saying if we love someone and in fact relationships are getting shorter. We don’t have time to sit in a café with someone and know his/her nature rather we just “swipe right”.

Simon Sinek is an idealist and a motivational speaker, once he said that “if we check our phone without any notification or wish to check it then at the same time our brain releases a chemical named “Dopamine” and it is the exactly same compound which makes our desire when we smoke, drink or gamble. Alcohol is not bad but excessive alcohol is bad, like gamble is fun but only within the limit.” So by inventing cigarettes Phillip Morris wanted our lungs but these smartphone wants our soul. It affects our personal life to a great extent.

Best way to get rid of it is to try spending just one week without social media. Put your phone down or keep notification off. There is no nicotine or nicotine patches for such addiction.

Nature has more beautiful things to show us, more beautiful tasks to do. We have hills to climb and rivers to swims. Beaches to surf and woods to fall in love with.We have forgetting many things like sitting with someone in a café or restaurant and talking to him/her about life.  And today’s millennial boys can’t even see out of the window while travelling. Listen to the flute of Krishna, or Mozart or Rahman's music. There is music every where. Music in winds, morning chirps of birds. nightangles on temples and pigeons on mosques.  

Peer pressure was once a normal thing but with increasing population of “hashtag mindset people” it n has become an infectious diseases. Once I had heard in a YouTube video that “We are great consumers but poor producers, we’ll buy what we can't afford with money that we don't have. To impress people we don't even know trying to be like everybody else. Get of a Facebook and put your face in a book. Roam, travel, get lost, fall in love. Embrace the randomness.