Some days ago I saw someone's Gtalk status message that said - 'Experiences alone count'. I am sure the person who put that up was in a reflective mode that day. It triggered off however, a different thought in my mind...of how in present times the emphasis is not on living the experience or being present in the experience but on counting one's experiences.
A quick run through an average Facebook page and one would get enough and more evidence of this happening - when someone walking around the streets of Italy on her honeymoon decides to post a picture of herself while she is there. She is also the one who was giving the world live-updates of her wedding ceremony as it happened and even responding to comments while the pundit fervently chanted wedding mantras. May be the idea of living and cherishing these special moments is now passé.
Then there is a clan, with so much restless energy that it is difficult to contain them in one place, one location for even a few hours or days. Their attention constantly flitting between the hundred things they want to do. A perfectly good evening with friends at home can all of a sudden lead to an urge to go to Carter road at some wee hour and have an ice-cream by the beach. A weekend at home would seem so mundane - when one can create the thrill and drama in one's life by roughing it out in a bus for hours and traveling to Yelagiri Hills to go paragliding for 15 minutes and spending the next 6 hours traveling back home. But what makes it all worth while i guess, is the picture taken at that exact moment when one was suspended mid-air and of course the 'tick' in the box against paragliding.
Some years ago trend-experts spoke about 'experience' as the new definition of luxury that this generation identified with. We spent our hard earned monies not on material possessions but on seeing new places, trying new things thus adding richness to our lives. Somewhere along the way, we started to measure experiences with the same yardstick as we were used to measuring our material possessions - based on their flaunt-worthniess. It was not fun then taking a holiday in an expensive, exotic destination if no one was watching. The pay-off then became external to the experience. (Counter productive if you ask me, to the very notion of an experience). With externalisation of the pay-off, the focus of one's attention shifted from the 'act' to the 'evidence of the act'. The act (experience) could last a few hours or few days but the 'flaunt-worthy evidence of the act' (a snapshot uploaded on FB) would only take a few minutes. Thus, our depleting engagement spans with the experience! While one was doing something...one was already thing of the next more exciting thing to do. Life 'Out There' was always more exciting.
Last year, talking to young adults, about their attitude to relationships, I found, this same attitude seamlessly extend to relationships as well. Being in a relationship with someone did not mean if someone richer, more exciting came along, one would not explore that possibility. Who knows where this attitude of 'Zindagi Na Mile Dobara....toh aaj kuch toofani kartein hai' is taking us?
A quick run through an average Facebook page and one would get enough and more evidence of this happening - when someone walking around the streets of Italy on her honeymoon decides to post a picture of herself while she is there. She is also the one who was giving the world live-updates of her wedding ceremony as it happened and even responding to comments while the pundit fervently chanted wedding mantras. May be the idea of living and cherishing these special moments is now passé.
Then there is a clan, with so much restless energy that it is difficult to contain them in one place, one location for even a few hours or days. Their attention constantly flitting between the hundred things they want to do. A perfectly good evening with friends at home can all of a sudden lead to an urge to go to Carter road at some wee hour and have an ice-cream by the beach. A weekend at home would seem so mundane - when one can create the thrill and drama in one's life by roughing it out in a bus for hours and traveling to Yelagiri Hills to go paragliding for 15 minutes and spending the next 6 hours traveling back home. But what makes it all worth while i guess, is the picture taken at that exact moment when one was suspended mid-air and of course the 'tick' in the box against paragliding.
Some years ago trend-experts spoke about 'experience' as the new definition of luxury that this generation identified with. We spent our hard earned monies not on material possessions but on seeing new places, trying new things thus adding richness to our lives. Somewhere along the way, we started to measure experiences with the same yardstick as we were used to measuring our material possessions - based on their flaunt-worthniess. It was not fun then taking a holiday in an expensive, exotic destination if no one was watching. The pay-off then became external to the experience. (Counter productive if you ask me, to the very notion of an experience). With externalisation of the pay-off, the focus of one's attention shifted from the 'act' to the 'evidence of the act'. The act (experience) could last a few hours or few days but the 'flaunt-worthy evidence of the act' (a snapshot uploaded on FB) would only take a few minutes. Thus, our depleting engagement spans with the experience! While one was doing something...one was already thing of the next more exciting thing to do. Life 'Out There' was always more exciting.
Last year, talking to young adults, about their attitude to relationships, I found, this same attitude seamlessly extend to relationships as well. Being in a relationship with someone did not mean if someone richer, more exciting came along, one would not explore that possibility. Who knows where this attitude of 'Zindagi Na Mile Dobara....toh aaj kuch toofani kartein hai' is taking us?
No comments:
Post a Comment