On keeping up with the times.......

People are always saying things like ‘You have to keep up with the times’ and ‘This isn’t like the earlier century.’ Even the temples are rolling with the times and have moved away from traditional hymns that only had rusty metal bells for accompaniment, to full blown worship concerts. It’s all very good and I do appreciate a lot of things about the current age but I’m not sure I belong here. Sometimes, I really think I would do very well inside a classic novel, being behind of my time without actually having to suffer the consequences of living in the pre-modern age. 

I mean, take the concept of unlimited download on the internet, for example. I’ve been vegetating before my laptop, knowing full well that I have actually many other works to do. So while I get to watch what I want, when I want it, I have to deal with such things as unmet deadlines, and the worst one yet, the guilt. 

This would have never been the case in the past. Internet presence these days is a continuous distraction and at the end of the day you would realize there is nothing productive you have done the whole day. 

And there’s all this pressure these days – every girl feels the need to look like a cover-girl, we need to sound intelligent, be successful at work as well as relationships and therapy is something we consider a part of urban life. It’s just too much. Back then, people expected so little of women. Only the intelligent ones read or knew something more than domestic hobbies such as knitting and cooking. And although I’m such a domestic disaster but also read and write, I would have been considered ‘well-groomed’ by default. Also, there would have been no Facebook or Photoshop – so there would have been minimal occasions for comparisons and so as the need to look the most beautiful.

But, it’s always the woman who carries the heavy end of the load – changing her hair colour, her choice of clothing, not call when she feels like so as to not suffocate the guy and what not – so she could win the man’s heart. Ridiculous and regressive! I mean, what’s next?

And what sucks the most about the present time is the race between earning money and happiness. With or being in this race, the men are also transforming drastically. With the changing time, increasing needs and growing responsibilities; men are changing too. They are becoming too busy professionally and hence ending up sparing out very little personal/family time. Their priorities are no more their wives, it seems, nor their kids rather to be a best employee of the organization they serve and to earn more than their counter parts. Their changed priorities have taken a first place in their new lists.

Fast paced life with many opportunities of comparisons cropping in, the true essence of happiness has lost somewhere. In the past, playing badminton, ludo, chess or cards with parents, fighting for being the first player in video games with your siblings and going for shopping, from grocery to clothes to jewellery to everything, with your husband was considered to be the best time. But the fastest moving time has left behind the slow and calm moments of happiness somewhere. In the race to earn more, family priorities are lagging behind.

Does keeping up with time means to build the villas full of materialist things, on the grave of small little moments sacrificed for keeping pace with earning more? Is the changing time bringing in any positive change in human life? Do we really have time left to be devoted on our own self or on the things which make our loved ones happy? The question that where are we heading towards with the change, still remains unanswered for me.