Another month has gone by and India has moved from being rather comfortable, complacent, and cocky even, to reeling under the second wave. We are facing an extremely stressful and challenging situation. And each one of us is back to living a simple at home life. Our lives, goals, dreams, and desires are all on hold.
The Roadfolk team decided to focus our attention on DESIRE, and made it the theme for this month. We figured that there must be so much latent desire that each of us are working on managing. So much that we need to do and want to do, that we are unable to do.
For me, my attention has been on evaluating my desires. Are they even necessary? What will be achieved if I went after every desire? Should I drop many and just bring my focus on the ones that truly matter to me? A complete overall evaluation is taking place for me. Many desires have dropped. Some new ones have crept in. And I am left with only a handful that I want to go after.
One of my main desires is to let go of all my fears. As I have aged, I have collected many fears. Most of all I fear getting old without ever having the life that I had desired to live. And I have made several efforts to beat this fear. To put it behind me. Just live each day as best I can and enjoy it. Honestly it keeps hankering at me. I cannot get rid of it. We humans spend too much time looking for that ideal life. And forget about living the moment. Getting lost in future desire. I, for one, most definitely want to and need to change that.
Recently I came across an article in the Financial Times espousing the idea of Alternative Hedonism. It talks about the how the “Backers of ‘alternative hedonism’ want us to lead more balanced lives, with time for culture and community”. It rings so true for all of us.
“The lockdown period has provided some insight on alternative ways of living – and this may indeed prove to have an influence in the longer term,” Kate explains. “Not everyone was in a position to have this experience but more than would normally be the case, we were given some sense of the pleasures and benefits to both people and planet of slower ways of living and travelling. Socially, too, something shifted during the worst of the pandemic, a new sense of community emerged, and a more republican spirit. Forced temporarily to loosen its hold on people’s time and activity, the work-and-spend existence gave way to a less consumerist and pressurised way of living. Private preoccupations yielded to altruistic concerns to help out.”
“Kate Soper calls for a vision of the good life not reliant on endless economic growth and points us to the ways in which our current patterns of living are not only environmentally harmful, but also make us miserable.”
Kate Soper is a British philosopher and is currently visiting professor at the University of Brighton. These are truly insightful thoughts from her.
We spend endless hours working ourselves to the bone to create wealth that we don’t necessarily need. To create assets that we will perhaps hardly ever use. The Boat. The Second Home. The Fourth Car. Just to name a few. These will only serve as trophies of our desires and will be left behind when we are gone. But the sacrifices made to get these will harm us and those around us both mentally and physically. The Damaged Relationships. The Missed Birthdays. The absence at the school plays. The Worry. The Lack of Laughter. The Lost Connections. The Destruction of Nature. All very real implications of our mindless and unnecessary wealth creation pursuits.
There needs to be solid rebalancing of work and consumption habits. And this pandemic more than anything is teaching us this.
Mark Banks, professor of cultural economy at Glasgow University, says: “Definitely we should be looking to work less. Commitments to care, intimate life, leisure and community projects would all be enhanced.”
GDP most definitely a failed metric. This endless pursuit for growth is destroying the resources of the planet. The rebalancing of work and consumption habits can change that. Consumerism, desire and aspiration are constantly being driven by the media, advertising and by the conditioning that we must have more and consume more. Only then are we considered successful.
We need to inspire the new generations to recreate the world and its many premises. To yearn for better living and to incessantly work towards regenerating and repurposing our planet. It is my unequivocal desire to inspire the generations to come with the thoughts and words that we share through our fledgling effort.
Best wishes for the times ahead.
Mohit Gupta
7th May 2021
