This & That Sinking in quicksands

IT HAPPENS slowly to begin with but so surely that insidiously it crawls into your work-life through the labyrinthine neural pathways of your mind. No action at this stage will cause the dilution of your hopes, aspirations and your dreams! Stop and think, ask yourself if you will ever reach the end of your rainbow if you continue to be bogged down in the morass of the routine? Will the existence you are in preclude further growth? Finally, is it already happening?

Take a long look at your life! Are you acting in a routinised, predictable way? Are you doing things in the way you've always done them, so that you are a machine that incidentally also lives and breathes? Your response mode is what is being discussed!

It is a habit that the majority of us find very easy to begin and impossibly hard to throw over. It is easy to do something you need to do today, because you did the same sort of thing the previous day and you don't really need to think to deeply about it. Its almost like a natural reflex. It not unlike lighting a stove. There is a limit to the innovative ways you perform this action. While it may be novel to light a stove while performing a complicated pas de deux it is neither efficient nor desirable; and you could do yourself serious and permanent injury! These are chores that are best left to a routine, mindless way of doing, though it may not be out of place to think of a bus conductor in Bangalore who developed a novel way of lighting a cigarette and went on, on the strength of that skill to become a cine- superstar! Many of us keep doing things with the ease of repetition because it is easy to do it the way one did it yesterday, but the moment we start doing things mindlessly we cannot imagine doing it any other way! Also, we effectively kill our ability to imagine, innovate and participate in proactivity.

Bustin' Out!

Being a creature of inflexible and unimaginative habit can have a crippling effect on your creativity. Everybody in this steep rut must make every effort to snap out of this ennui. So many people start off right, they have wonderful dreams and visions, but once they get into `the way things have always been done', the dreams dissipate and the visions vanish! I was once looking after a very large integrated rural development project where I was able to develop my skills in organic farming, alternative energy generation, rural education, alternate medical intervention, dairying, subsidiary income generation for rural ladies and community banking. Several friends used to visit me during the weekends, and one who had been from our college days involved in the social service league and adult education rued the fact that he had not been able to realise his ambition. When I asked him why, he said that he had got into the rut of his business and could not break free now. He was right; breaking free for him is now impossible. He has become bogged down into his routine and has no will or ability to use his mind for anything else anymore except to stay where he is. This goes to show how negative patterns of behaviour cramp our capability to grow in a continuum. My friend thinks he is content. I only wish he truly was!

If any of us do not change the way we do things we will find ourselves in the same boat as my formerly talented friend. Your aspirations will become clouded and the vision will transform into a faint, barely discernible mirage!

Aspirations are not realised without the effort of doing something about it! Thinking that you'll do it later may be a way to delay the event, perhaps; but in actuality this procrastination will cost you your dream! Only if you change the way you do things, and snap out of your routine will you be able to realise your hopes and your cherished goals.

So, when do you start? Well, the best time is Today! The minute you put down this article, get up do something different! Even if it is as seemingly simple as going home by another route, or going home and taking everyone out to dinner, go ahead and do something that can show yourself that you mean business and that you will refocus on the vision that has been retreating into the dim recesses of your personal history!

ABHIMANYU ACHARYA

abhi.hyd@cnkonline.com