When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow up. cause being a kid, you don't get to have many liberties. Being part of middle class is even worse for a kid. You have limitations on everything. From the cloths you wear, to the stationary and toys you buy, to movie theater and restaurant visits you can have, to the trips you can make. It feels like you are trapped in a life, which has so many things and you can't have most of the things, and there's nothing that you can do about it. And yes, that definitely sucks.
And that is when I decided, it's better to be an adult than a kid(Yeah, I was always more mature than the kids of my age). And then I grew up, where I could earn sufficient to spend the way I want to. But what I failed to understand as a kid is that it's just not about money only. When you grow physically, you grow emotionally as well. Being a kid, our emotions are so limited that they don't bother us much. We are not exposed to stuff as attachments, insecurity, lust, attention, and the list is long. And our social system can educate us regards to making money, but it fails miserably to teach us about our own emotions.
And one of such emotions I am stumbling upon these days is attention. It is very simple and tricky at the same time. The 90's generation is part of nuclear family upbringing. Even if people lived in combined families, they don't have more than one siblings (Majority), and that causes youth of our generation feel like we are entitled to attention. A single kid or a kid who has just one sibling, is subjected to tremendous amount of attention from our parents. Is it good? or bad? it doesn't matter. Cause it's not about good or bad. It is about the habit we all have, to get the attention we always seek.
Every single person you have encountered is probably looking to get some attention. Why? Cause whenever you find some attention, the little spotlight, you feel special. The kinda special which our parents used to make us feel. But their attention isn't what we seek anymore. Then what do we seek?
We seek to find a special spot in the group of friends we are hanging out. We want to be listened, every time we say something. We want our work to be appreciated in office, even if it is just regular stuff. We want to be part of the exclusivity, in everything that is happening around us. But the problem is, when everybody is special, nobody is special. and that is where our 'expectation mountain' starts to fall apart.
In the world of so called exclusivity, when everyone is trying to get attention, it is not possible for everyone to get attention from everybody they want attention from. And when that happens, we start loosing our shit. That's when we start feeling "Missing out", we feel lonely, we feel lost. But while feeling so tragic, we forget to acknowledge the people who are providing us attention. And we keep on focusing about what we don't have, rather than what we already have. This concept is very well explained in a famous short story "Grass is always greener".
It is some sort of chain. A chain in which everybody is giving attention to somebody and and not getting attention back, and hence feeling a victim of emotional torture. And the people who are at the bottom of this chain are the ones who truly suffer. Because at the bottom, they provide attention to people but don't get any from a single living soul. And these are the people who suffer from depression and anxiety. And rather than being treated, the society mocks such individuals, for being at bottom. Irony, I suppose.
So is there a solution to this dilemma? I suppose not. Cause we all are hardwired from the day our first conscious thought appeared, that we are entitled to attention. And unless you are as great as a human like Lord Buddha, you probably will not overcome this behavior. And you will keep seeking for attention from the people you desire the most. Just another 'Human Thing' I guess.
But the thing we can do is stop feeling like a victim, when we don't receive this desired attention. Just like a kid from middle class family, who cannot have the toys he want, he'd have to accept the fact that maybe he desires to have a Funskool toy but have to settle with whatever is available in his local toy store which is affordable enough to his pocket money.
And that is when I decided, it's better to be an adult than a kid(Yeah, I was always more mature than the kids of my age). And then I grew up, where I could earn sufficient to spend the way I want to. But what I failed to understand as a kid is that it's just not about money only. When you grow physically, you grow emotionally as well. Being a kid, our emotions are so limited that they don't bother us much. We are not exposed to stuff as attachments, insecurity, lust, attention, and the list is long. And our social system can educate us regards to making money, but it fails miserably to teach us about our own emotions.
And one of such emotions I am stumbling upon these days is attention. It is very simple and tricky at the same time. The 90's generation is part of nuclear family upbringing. Even if people lived in combined families, they don't have more than one siblings (Majority), and that causes youth of our generation feel like we are entitled to attention. A single kid or a kid who has just one sibling, is subjected to tremendous amount of attention from our parents. Is it good? or bad? it doesn't matter. Cause it's not about good or bad. It is about the habit we all have, to get the attention we always seek.
Every single person you have encountered is probably looking to get some attention. Why? Cause whenever you find some attention, the little spotlight, you feel special. The kinda special which our parents used to make us feel. But their attention isn't what we seek anymore. Then what do we seek?
We seek to find a special spot in the group of friends we are hanging out. We want to be listened, every time we say something. We want our work to be appreciated in office, even if it is just regular stuff. We want to be part of the exclusivity, in everything that is happening around us. But the problem is, when everybody is special, nobody is special. and that is where our 'expectation mountain' starts to fall apart.
In the world of so called exclusivity, when everyone is trying to get attention, it is not possible for everyone to get attention from everybody they want attention from. And when that happens, we start loosing our shit. That's when we start feeling "Missing out", we feel lonely, we feel lost. But while feeling so tragic, we forget to acknowledge the people who are providing us attention. And we keep on focusing about what we don't have, rather than what we already have. This concept is very well explained in a famous short story "Grass is always greener".
It is some sort of chain. A chain in which everybody is giving attention to somebody and and not getting attention back, and hence feeling a victim of emotional torture. And the people who are at the bottom of this chain are the ones who truly suffer. Because at the bottom, they provide attention to people but don't get any from a single living soul. And these are the people who suffer from depression and anxiety. And rather than being treated, the society mocks such individuals, for being at bottom. Irony, I suppose.
So is there a solution to this dilemma? I suppose not. Cause we all are hardwired from the day our first conscious thought appeared, that we are entitled to attention. And unless you are as great as a human like Lord Buddha, you probably will not overcome this behavior. And you will keep seeking for attention from the people you desire the most. Just another 'Human Thing' I guess.
But the thing we can do is stop feeling like a victim, when we don't receive this desired attention. Just like a kid from middle class family, who cannot have the toys he want, he'd have to accept the fact that maybe he desires to have a Funskool toy but have to settle with whatever is available in his local toy store which is affordable enough to his pocket money.
Very well said bro... :)... Keep writing such things...
ReplyDeleteGreat writing... Very relative.... Keep going!!!
ReplyDelete