I am good at adopting bad habits and better at sticking to them. Failure to quit them pinches me as much as the adoption comforts, but at the end, I am just unable to quit.
I like a book. I resolutely pick it up to read from cover to cover. I carry it on my way to office. I read a few pages. I like it. I admire it. I discuss it. I lose interest. I quit it. I pick up the next book.
My recent pickings that have seen the same fate were 'Freakonomics', 'Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid', 'The Feudal
Spirit' and probably one more which I did not read enough even to remember the title. Pick of this week was 'Notes to Myself'. I bought it long back, probably read a few pages too but lately it had been seeing the dust on my bookshelf. I dont know what prompted me to pick it up that morning, probably its small size or was it the fact that I had liked it when I first
skimmed through it. In any case, its first few lines were enough to make me realize that It will not waste my time.
Skipping the first few pages, let me write what is on a later page.
"I want to be doing things to be doing them. Not to be doing something else. I dont want to drive to get there, I dont want to make love to have climaxes, or study to keep abreast. I dont want to do things to sell myself on myself. I dont want to do nice things to people to be nice. I dont want to work to make money. I want to work to work.
Today, I dont want to live for. I want to live."
I was a bit sleepy when I opened this page but as I progressed, each line started snapping another layer of drowsiness and by the time I was finished reading the last word, I was already transported to a comforting stage of deep thoughts. I was excited.
I was trying to put together some of the daily activities and classify them as being for-something-activities and just-activities. I listen to 'Tere Bina' from GURU at least 10 times a day and there is no for-something feeling to it. Neither relaxation, nor admiration or escape from office-boredom. I do listen to it to listen to it and do not seek anything. May be there are a few more activities, I can enlist. Biking, sipping evening tea on my terrace, weekend work outs at tennis court etc.
On the other hand, there are those for-something activities. I work and I do not work to work. There are some other aims to it. Money is one of them and I cannot filter it off. I do study and once again I do not study to study. There are reasons and they will exist.
Well, there is a chain of events or a series of stages that some activities go through. It starts from 'excitement', moves to 'purpose', graduates to 'passion' and if it hadn't assumed the downward slope yet, it is transformed into 'do-it-to-do-it' stage. All of us have different things in this stage and probably that is why different things pleasure us.
Going a step ahead, I try to look into those for-something activities, or the 'purpose' stage of all the activities. Dont they impart a different pleasure altogether? Well, driving to get there is interesting....working for money is not that bad....you are always in an unsaid race....against somebody else or against yourself. The uncertainity involved does impart a new life, it enriches and exhorts you. Racing ahead of others or yourself does give a satisfaction which is absent at the last stage as mentioend earlier. So be it.
I might see a day when I will live and will not live for. I am not sure how will I react to it, but today, I do not look for it. I am happy to do things for something else and it does not involve selling myself on myself.
Still, stumbling against the book was not fruitless. It invoked a good analysis. I could name and channelize a lot of unnamed thoughts.
