The Passerby Doesn’t Matter, He’s Just Passing By

You know you learn the wisest of things in the most random way. Take for example, something like the deeply contemplative line I randomly came up with below.

“The passerby doesn’t matter, he’s just passing by. Your life is going on. You’re living it.”

It was a hot Monday, and some official kept me waiting beyond the time he committed, so I took to where my car was parked, and put on some good old Thrash Metal. A passerby (some acquaintance, of course), says to me “STILL listening to Heavy Metal, huh?? Said in the local lingo, it has just that right dose of annoying twang to it. My response was of course a colorful rejoinder. “Yeah, want to see me do the air guitar riffs, full-on bass slams with drums rolling, and some head-banging vocal imitations while I’m at it?

Well, that dull moment passed, didn’t mean anything. But then I thought there’s a lesson that can be squeezed from this short dialog. After all, the world keeps saying, ‘nothing is without meaning’. To begin with, as an extremely picky aficionado of the sounds that I choose to listen to, the uninitiated passerby was clueless of the intricate variations that define different genre of music. Like what passes for #Heavy and how it becomes Thrash. But he still decided to pass that remark, with beaming confidence.

So, yes ’the passerby’ I wondered how much of him are we allowing into ourselves every day, to unconsciously change our options and opinions? I should say, a lot more than necessary; depending on the sensitivity of the situation you are experiencing in life and the frame of mind you’re peaking or depressing at. I guess that’s how people settle on option B, when, they actually would otherwise go for option A-plus if allowed to be directed by the uninterrupted independent mind. Depending on what the stakes are, I suppose that is also how we head down Door number NO, because a passerby’s passing remarks influenced us to avoid Door number YES.

That first puff of nicotine was probably the doings of a passerby who encouraged the impressionable youngster to detour and tread a pathway to all that comes after early teenage smoking. That bad choice of first date get-up was a disaster, because you listened… to the passerby. Your skin is a minefield of zits and your body is a scrap yard of tattoos because you listened to the passerby. You mouthed off the wrong anti-slogans at the right time, because you thought the passerby knew better. You’re trading in your life for a few cheap kicks because the passerby said Life is Short, Live Fast, and you believed him.

You aced that entrance exam because you didn’t listen to the passerby. You always make your deadlines; because you don’t do what the passerby wanted you to do. You’re not lobbying for kidney donors; your liver is intact, because you didn’t pay half a mind to the passerby.

The passerby is useless to you. Negotiate the bumps on life’s highway, in your own style.

On a bigger canvas, I presume the lesson translates to seeing those minimally important external voices and personalities as ‘minimally important external voices and personalities’. Their off-the-cuff remarks and suggestions are mere musings with no specific directions or any valid consequences.

The passerby is attempting to impact your life, and rob your quiet peaceful world. Shut him Up!!!

Logged in but signed out, Lights on but no one’s in

BW&Gray - Logged In but Signed Out, lights on but no one's in

We could all give ourselves a pat on the back if spending a good chunk of our life in the virtual world was a positive sign of development, but unfortunately it is not. There couldn’t possibly be more disconnect in action (in these times of high connectivity).

An electronic screen replaces what used to be living, breathing people with emotions participating in and, interacting through emotion-based conversations. No need to rustle for proof here because it’s an infectious trend and the sickness has landed.

It’s a common observation that a great amount of children and parents’ time go into television, playing with smart phones, computer games and social media. While the seniors set aside separate ‘screen time’ which is exclusively their time, the juniors, some of them as small as two or three years remain glued to ‘the screens’ for hours in a day.

Playing computer games, watching TV shows, surfing internet and hogging space and time in social media is most commonly how the youth/adolescents spend time, ‘in front of the screen,’ again. Most times these routines go unmonitored in households and therefore the ills that are impending with them also come rushing through the doorway. The few rules in place in this regard are usually to check if the homework assigned from the schools are being done or not.

Many experts in this field have said that a child should not be exposed to any electronic media until they are safely over two years of age. This is apparently because a child’s brain develops rapidly in these years and it is obvious that they would learn better from another human not an electronic screen or screens. At the same time for others too, the hours they put into television should be kept under check.

For a large portion of the population the country though, the message would serve little use.

In many households, the elders have most often than not just allowed the idiot box as a distraction for the kids, so that they at least remain indoors and away from getting dirty or sick. Also, the seniors themselves have their personal screen time. The television set does fill in as a nanny (although it’s a poor representation of one) as toddlers remain affixed to the idiot box.

Excessive interaction through electronic media which includes mobile phones, internet and social media, it is believed starts to create an artificial reality in the virtual world where much time is spent. The dedicated users then start to be tuned to this falseness of reality. That way when such things as ‘instant gratification’ (a trait strongly induced by excess use of internet, social media and related gadgets) is not possible, in real life, it starts to impact the users very negatively.

Although there is the goodness of meeting people from across worlds and oceans, getting information and knowledge by a mere flick of a switch or a click of a button, there are equally the unwanted aspects to be factored.

People who spend too much time online, especially the younger lot tend to become detached from reality of things – this is backed by many studies.

Anything and everything shared on internet and social media is never actually deleted permanently and most times, second thoughts are too late to undo those actions, which could be something like sharing contents that are personally damaging or could be damaging for others.

Published as Column in Business Bhutan on July 18, 2015 

BW & Gray or Black, White & Gray is a column published in the Business Bhutan and solely tagged with the pieces written by this writer

The ever-present past

BW&Gray

The ever-present past

These are fast times we live in and anything not on the fast-track is old and obsolete; they are basically ‘in the past’ and has minimal weight of relevance. Here’s a food for thought though – without the past or the old, where does the foundation for anything spring from.

In that manner of speaking, the past is more intimately attached than one is willing to admit. The past never passes.

If the legendary Indian saint did not visit this nation in the eight century, fly to a rock face riding a flaming tigress and jumpstart Buddhism, the country would not have the presently existing noble practices.

Jog dial to 1907, when a king was crowned, civil wars came to an end and a long-lasting era of peace and stability came into motion. Minus that bit of detail in the past, it’s easily said, the successive line of kings who contributed every ounce of possible efforts in ensuring the general status quo would not be reality.

By that reason, the country wouldn’t have been hailed to greatness with the legends of a visionary king in the person of the Fourth Druk Gyalpo and the great monarchs before that.

The romance with the past strikes wholesome if we take into account the nation’s even now quite the infant democratic institution and how it is perceived.

The institution is seen as one of the most peacefully transitioning among others in the world, and for starters, the whole process was as oft-repeated ‘gifted’ not born out of struggles as has been the convention for others.

Attempts to bury matters in the past, things that should not actually be silenced; the outcome for such cases in the present is usually a forceful burst of pent-up angst and judgment.

The Gyelpozhing land case that got top officials tangled in legal loops and commanded answers and accountability is not a very distant memory past. Similarly the Lhakhang Karpo is freshly in the past, but for everybody’s general knowledge, this past will always rub elbows with its present, always.

The present is always the collective consequence of the events passed or actions accumulated as is for individuals, like wise for institutions, for nations.

An immortal song playing almost at every trending place in town is on someone’s least favorite list, because it reminds of certain faces he or she is trying to bury forever in the past using time as a chosen device. Yet again, this or that flash of the past always comes around.

Ensuring the presence of a comforting past, is not entirely an obsolete idea after all.

Published as Column in Business Bhutan on July 4, 2015

BW & Gray or Black, White & Gray is a column published in the Business Bhutan and solely tagged with the pieces written by this Author.