A life of fear — Tragedy of real world
It was recently that I was talking to a young, promising woman who quit her much admired job at a big tech company in the heart of silicon valley. She quit as she didn’t align with the purpose and function of the org she was involved with and of-course majority of these stories have their roots in working for a manager that people don’t like. While hearing her sense of purpose fueled my inner quest to find a purpose in my own in life (I was already 7–8 years elder to this lady), a sentence she uttered in response to an innocent question of mine made me think of this insane tragedy of life — constant fear.
I asked her as she was in the last 2 weeks of her notice period, “ How are you feeling?”. I was expecting she would answer with words referring to “Elated”, “Relaxed”, but she answered with “Stressed”. I asked “Why?”. She said, “Clearly I am not on good terms with my manager and I am afraid of not being able to get a good recommendation when I might need one in the future. ” I came up with all sorts of ideas on how to handle the situation, overcome the fear based on my years of experience and build upon similar situations in my past life, but this made me think, “Why fear is the price for freedom in today’s world?”. May be it was similar situation our ancestors faced, but hey, I only know what I have observed until now and in my time. As they say, “ Be Present”.
This incident surmised my entire life in my head. If I have to sum up my life up until this point, it has to be dominated with one word, “Fear”.
When I was young, it was the fear of being admonished by my parents. Like keeping things in order while at home, doing my homework, hanging out with ideal kids, not having any bad habits etc. Then I went to school and lived in the constant fear of my teachers. Did I do my homework right? Is my uniform intact and clean? Will they complain to my parents when they meet them in the standard parent-teachers meeting?
Whenever I made friends, there was a fear of being accepted or rejected by the group of kids I wanted to be part of. The fear that being myself might assign a label of ‘pariah’ or ‘outcast’ or ‘weird’ on me. Somehow I survived my childhood and that is something to be proud of. Now the strive to survive as an adult in corporate life and capitalist world inundated by dopes of anxiety by social media has replaced this fear of yesteryears.
But what a waste of time especially in a life which is limited by the number of years one can survive. We are living on a death clock. Even the most intelligent and successful people die after a certain age. I don't know a human who lived beyond 150 years of age in the recorded history of the world. Well if you are limited in timespan of the life you can live, it is logical to assume that every moment of our lives spent in a state of negative emotions and mental states — fear, anxiety, stress, anger is a significant part of the life wasted. We anyways sleep off one-third of our active lives and to waste even an iota of a moment beyond that is a travesty of being human.
How can we make reparations for that — for all the moments we have lost? Well to the rescue comes a less understood but a more fundamental business term — ‘sunk cost’. What you have lost shouldn’t impact your decisions for the future. Well in real life, what appears to be lost can be redeemed (to some extent) by contemplating on past experiences, absorbing the takeaways and avoiding similar mistakes in the future. Use the experiences to understand that life is what begins at this moment, goes into the future as long as the consciousness survives in the physical body that we have.
Additionally we can take control of the life going forward by adjusting the environment around us so that it is conducive to our life goals. This theory stems from the popular book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. By surrounding ourselves with people of our choice, books of our liking and food that is healthy — we set ourselves for a life (whatever is left of it) that is fulfilling and where we can live our natural self — uninhibited by fear of any kind. A great poem by Rabindranath Tagore reminds us of an utopia which is only possible in the realms of our mind and consciousness —
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action into that heaven of freedom,
my father,
let my country awake.
