Work Life Balance | Alone in the Crowd
Mental health still isn’t talked about nearly as much as it should be, so now more than ever we need to prioritize conversations about it and give mental health the recognition it deserves!
May is the Mental Health Awareness Month hence we bring to you an excerpt from Dr Samir Parikh and Kamna Chhibber’s Alone in The Crowd to help you live a balanced life.
Alone in the Crowd by Dr Samir Parikh and Kamna Chhibber
As you sit listening to your friend talk about all that he has been doing, you wonder about where you lost sight of all the other things you used to insist were important in your life—things that you had pledged would always be present. Somewhere, in doing your work and handling your responsibilities, you feel like you have lost sight of those other things which were so important to you. You try to think of when it all happened but your mind struggles to point towards that one instance that you can label as the turning point in your life. You feel it was perhaps an amalgamation of things. Your mind knows that it was a slow, subtle shift that kept happening and you just did not realize when that magic term, work-life balance, went missing for you.
Knowing What Is Important.
The decisive element in resolving the issues you have identified as the cause of your loneliness is figuring out what is important. As you proceed through the different phases and stages of your life, there is a certain amount of automaticity associated with it. In a fairly clinical manner, you move from one thing to the next and keep shifting your values and goals without necessarily making a conscious choice and carefully thinking through, ‘Is this really what I want?’
These decisions and the trajectory you follow is predetermined on the basis of what you had heard and known while growing up—the expected ways of being and doing things. Your mind does not naturally gravitate towards thinking and asking the question, ‘What would I have done had I not known this is the supposed natural next step?’ Such questions, in fact, are unlikely to surface in your mind. It is easier to follow the herd and keep nudging yourself towards that natural, socially determined next step.
In this process, you also forget to answer for yourself, ‘What holds importance for me?’ It becomes a given that you would not be raising questions and would follow suit with what the expectations are. Usually, in today’s times, these are usually about finishing school and then college, going to one of the A-listed universities through which you can get the best placement and, as a result, the best remuneration for the work you would be doing. Once you have that job in hand and everyone around you affirms that you are now financially stable, you take the step towards settling down with a partner—of your own choice or with someone you are introduced to by family or friends. After this is done, you once again shift focus to the workplace. After all, you must ensure there is substantial, periodic growth in your roles and positions to be able to provide for and keep supporting yourself and your family.
In doing all this, it is likely that you forget about the other side—the one that looks at your family, for whom you want to work, and yourself, whose ambitions you wish to satisfy. Unconsciously, your choices keep taking you away from a lot of what you had desired in your younger years—music, games, dance, art, reading, relaxing. Many of these can begin to feel like chores and often, a lot of them even go missing from the list of things you would absolutely love to do.