“Did you have a good holiday?”
With this question, we would feel like sending them back where they came from after smashing their heads with computer for two reasons. First, work contradicts a great summer getaway. Going back to work means away from loved ones and that we are again hooked to ‘wealth is the only health’ syndrome. By that I mean I am a slave to the idea that HAVING material things is the source of one’s well-being. Reality bites. And vacation is a realization that Being is itself enough. Going back to colored jobs slaps to our face that we have more wants to attend to.
The second reason maybe is that during holidays we become oblivious of who and what we are. With work as our sense of identity and security, any deviation from it means the end of the world. Thus, we are unable to enjoy the holiday. Any slight disappointments would enable us to declare world war. We dished out our hard earned sources and forked out unmet expectations.
For whatever reasons it maybe, post-holiday sucks. A way to keep you sane is a simple state of mind: We are lucky that we do not belong to the starving population and that we can still go back to our state of Being during vacation without being bothered by the state of Having, the very reason we have to work.
Mindless consumption, says Oliver James, blinds that we are consumed to having wants than meeting real needs. It magnifies insecurity because we are more desperate to succeed at work, because we need more money to pay for the checks beyond necessity. He added, “Overwork interferes with intimacy because you are too tired and stressed to relate properly. You constantly feel you are failing and ineffective because there is always another glittering prize. And you have to spend more time acting out false roles (inauthenticity) to succeed at work.”
Affluence is the main reason why an increasing number of Filipinos go overseas to seek for greener pasture. It may be material comfort to enable us to buy food, drinks, dress and shoes you want and spend time a great getaway with your loved ones. For some, an experience to spice up one’s credentials to gain more material rewards. This plagues us with ‘affluenza’ epidemic which explains why in Western Europeans suffer from mental illness.
Following is a dosage of prevention if not a pound of cure according to Oliver James, author of Contented Dementia - 24-Hour Wraparound Care for Lifelong Well-Being
1. There’s beauty in defining beauty. Beauty products are expensive.
If you are a woman, you should pursue an internally defined notion of beauty, not seek to be attractive. When you look in the mirror, aim to satisfy the aesthetics of the person you are looking at and not, as is the case for most women, to make other women envious or men desire you.
2. There’s a difference between parenting and pampering.
If you are a parent, try enjoying motherhood and fatherhood, rather than cursing it; you are most likely to achieve that by trying to meet your children's needs, rather than treating them like little adults or beasts in the nursery requiring civilisation through naughty steps and supernannying.
3. A shirt is still a shirt even if it is not Giordano or Mango
Reject our society's obsession with exam results and try to educate your children by fascinating them with stuff that already interests them, rather than brainwashing them. The main goal of the present system is to create good little producer-consumers, but you will make yourself, as well as your children, miserable if you do not resist this trend. Surprisingly enough, you will find it really is possible for them to get good exam results and at the same time to learn how to learn, to develop the curiosity that scholarship feeds.
4. Truth is a never ending activity. It will not make us bored. While buying is a consequence of ennui and depression.
Most fundamentally, be authentic (a concern with fundamental truth) rather than sincere (like Americans and Tony Blair, who believe it's enough to feel something intensely). Be playful rather than indulge in the game-playing that is increasingly required of us at school and then at the office.
5. Try something new. Think out of the box (television).
And finally, be vivacious (alive, not living and partly living) rather than the hyperactivity daily illustrated by TV presenters and over-anxious high-achievers.
No comments:
Post a Comment