Skip to main content

An Uneventful Day

"How was your day", I messaged her.

"Boring and uneventful...how was your day been so far", she replied.

Again? This was becoming a recurring and somewhat worrying theme whereby I would go onto discuss in length the events that broke the monotony of adult life and added some color to it while she patiently listened. In some ways it was ideal. I had a hundred things to say while she was more than content to listen and (more importantly) laugh at it. It was not everyday I had someone who displayed that level of curiosity in my awesome life (warning..narcissism ahead).

However as much as I do love talking about myself, what I appreciated as much were people who were equally and more expressive. A common trend that was emerging of late was this lack of expressiveness and openness, something I blamed largely on the distracting nature of smartphones, social media, Netflix etc, which resulted in terrible table conversations and way too many moments of silences. It was not that things were not happening to us on a daily basis, things that surprised, angered, disappointed or simply made us happy, but we were either failing to observe these events or failing to appreciate that they were all there was to life. 

For as Annie Dillard, in trying to emphasis presence over productivity, brilliant put it, "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives".

So yes, do not tell me the day was uneventful. If you look back carefully, every day had something that caused your heart to flutter, every day had thoughts that made your emotions stir and every day had something you could talk about.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Another Day at the Office

"I am sorry, but are you good at IT?", she inquired with the most apologetic of expression. I gave her an incredulous look. Seriously? This was the second time I was being asked that question in one month and I took offense. It was almost as if the world judged that the only reason my race would be allowed to venture overseas was to fix other people's computers. "No. I am a production engineer", I replied, half wondering if I should clarify it had nothing to do with human production, which my people are also well known for. "Oh. That is a pity. Our printer broke down and we were wondering how to fix it", she said pointing to a piece of contraption that lay on the table nearby. Men being men, I offered to help. On walking over and looking into the inside of the contraption, I saw what most millennials see if they were to ever see the inside of the multiple devices they are perpetually holding onto; abyss. I doubted she would give me a discount f...

Life in the Time of Corona

I can't remember the last time I felt I had this much time. Not that I was never the beneficiary of a balanced life within socialist Europe, but I had squandered much of it away, jumping from the consumption of ever immersive electronic devices, forgetful routines and the maintenance of social relationships. A digital detox felt timely. Faced with a swath of unfilled time, here I was blogging again after ages (does creative pursuits such as writing does not fall within digital detox?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Time had flown. 2020 is a year that will live in all our memories till the end of our lives, not so much because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. A year that started promisingly with two memorable marriages of family and friend came to a halt as a tiny microorganism proved how vulnerable we humans still were. I remember when colleagues in the office laughed as a Chinese friend hoarded masks so she could send them back home. A month later they were asking her where the...

Undertones

"Don'e be like a girl. Come on. Jump!". "You are not a girl. Now put your head into the water". "See those girls. Even they are not afraid of swimming in the big pool". A person's true nature is often very evident in times of frustration. In my failing attempts to make my eight year old cousin swim, I resorted to shaming and comparison, What he needed was courage. Therefore who he had to be compared with was a group that was not associated with it. The sentences came to me almost naturally, Without thought. And then I caught myself swimming in that stereotype. It surprised me for it opposed the strong belief my rational self held on the idea of equality. Following the surprise came the shame, the shame in the knowledge that despite my open claim that women were by no means to be taken to be mentally or emotionally weaker to men, I subconsciously did harbour thoughts that they were in fact, weaker. Plus, it was made worse by the realisat...