is there anybody in there?

We would have often come across the common phrase in english, ‘As busy as a bee’. With obvious refernce to the waylaid ways of the honey bee, who forever seems busy to us, continously gathering nector from the flowers, or fortyfing its hive, or doing something or the other, the phrase draws parallels to a person who lives a life like that, which in today’s rat race, practically refers to almost everyone. The sad part is that we’ve been so caught up just keeping pace with the way that things move ahead, that we don’t even have time for ourselves, leave alone our families and our loved ones. So, needless to say, these busy bees, trapped in the urban, fortified concrete beehives, is quite oblivious of what this is doing to them.

Picture this. A typical working man wakes up at 8 am everyday. Apparently, waking earlier than this is not even a near possibility as the much needed 6 hour sleep cycle wouldn’t get completed. He drains a mug of coffee, and a slice of toast, that too on the lucky days. Ms good old wife isn’t home you see, she does the early mrning shifts at work. He hits the office at 10 am, and an average day of work consists of chasing never ending goals, draining down 14 more mugs of coffee, n bout a packet of cigarettes. Lunch consists of a soggy burger, straight from the coffee shop at work, gulped down an hour too late. Shift over, he maked his way back home, packed in his cab like sardines in a can, making way through the polluted streets of city, back home at 1 am. Wifey is already asleep, you see, rising prices, rents, early morning shifts, can’t complain either. So dinner is served, cold and straight from the refridgerator. Hit the sack at 2 am, 8 am again next mrning, rejuvinated to take on the challenges of a new day ahead. Perfect.

This is the life style that majority of people are living in the big cities, a distant cry of what dreams they saw as school kids. It’s a stark reality, its definitely not going down well with the doc from next street. So when this typical corporate guy goes to the doc with headaches, dizziness, and inability to concentrate for long time, this is what the prescription says, “ Lifestyle disorders caused due to lack of diet, sleep, stress busting activity blah blah blah.”

In a race for achieving too much of perfection, man has actually forgotten the basic ingridients for a healthy life. In persuit of happiness, he has forgotten how to be happy, and doesn’t go too well for the human body, or his mind. What starts out as a nagging headache or a backache, can accentuate into discorders like migrain and spondalitis. There is also an increasing trend of high blood pressure, cholerstorol and increasing heart attacks among the youth, all off shoots of our unhealthy lifestyles. It wouldn’t be surprising then that despite the growth in medical technologies over the years, the life expectancy would continue to decrease.

In circles of the overworked, there is also a misconception that the human body can take it all. It’s a matter of pride for someone if he can work non stop, survive on a spartan diet, and still work to his maximum. But we don’t realize it that our body and our mind are not our enemies, and like everything else, they need the correct amount of rest, recuperation and unwinding. As in physics, when stress exceeds the sustainable limit, the material breaks. Similarly, the human body would eventually break down if stretched beyond the limit.

For most people, this act of unwinding is an impossible ask, as is setting aside a meagre 20 minutes in a day for themselves. But come to think of it, its not all that difficult. People have different ways of unwinding. For some, there is nothing like petting, or going for a short walk early morning, some like to medidate, others follow the various gurus on tv, doing the yoga asanas, the ways and means are many, one just has to listen to his heart, and set out doing what he wants to do best, before his heart just stops talking to him.