It's All in the Mind

A quick glance at my phone told me that I was 38 minutes away from home; mostly because of traffic on the infamous outer ring road. To give you some idea, my commute from office to home is around 20 minutes considering I sometimes end up in rush hour, while in others I'm saved from the ever so angry fellow commuters.

A side story to this is that I never really wanted to rely on technology so much. I was always grumbling at companies who treat our privacy as a means of making money through location based advertising or the general paranoia that others know where I am with little or no effort. While it's possible to track down every active cell phone no matter how basic, the degree to which I wanted to protect my location was a lot higher. A few years down the road, I have thrown caution to the wind and activated GPS antennas on all my devices; so Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook or who ever is related to them at any level can know where I am. Whether you subscribe to that school of thought is of course subjective. Comparing my old cautious self to this tech embracing person is a learning by itself. I learnt how and why I should say 'never' to anything. That's mostly because no matter how much we think we are in control of our lives, the truth is we aren't. Maybe you can control your car by steering like a daredevil or jump from a bridge with minimal safety gear; those momentary adventures have nothing to do with the overall picture that I'm talking about. You probably wanted to be someone else in your childhood, but fate has it's own plans you accept over the course of time. Kudos to those who achieve their dreams though, but understand that it was meant to be that way all along. Moving away from the philosophical, we must understand that time has the power to change us, our thoughts and surroundings. 

Now that my phone has warned me of the traffic ahead; that I'm quite some time away from the comfort of a hot meal and my ever so inviting bed, the drive back seemed calm enough though there was a drizzle, some very angry motorists bearing down on me and not to mention my playlist all of a sudden shuffling my not so fun tracks. I was unfazed by all this mostly because my mind had pre-empted it. The funny part was I couldn't figure it out till I got back that the drive lasted an hour in such hostile conditions. The moment I parked the car and saw the time, it got me thinking. On any other day had I not known that the traffic would be this bad, I would've slammed the door harder, sworn at almost all the rickshaw drivers, shouted on top of my voice at anyone who cut a lane, a pedestrian who surprised me with a road cross or fumble with my phone in a futile attempt to play that Metallica track all over again. It really is something to think about isn't it? 

Over the years, my share of travel has taught me that not much will go as per the plan you chalked in the comfort of your office or home. Yet, the mindset of an explorer or the spirit of adventure has taken over, leading you to forgive the nuances faced time and again. You think it's fun to get lost in an unknown place as you survive on instant noodles or leftovers from lunch. The pattern I observed here is how strong and important the mind is in our body. To borrow a line from Batman's Scarecrow - 'I respect the mind's power over the body'. It's really not hard to wake up in the morning and go for a jog if your mind tells you it's fine. Life is always about how we see things. Those positive vibes also have a profound effect on your outlook and never go unnoticed, nor does the fact that you probably uplifted their mood. 

I'm not sure my fellow motorists had the luxury of knowing the situation before hand on the day, which lead to some extraordinary road rage. I feel this to be ubiquitous not just in India, but going by stories elsewhere, a problem we all need to work on. The road is an extremely dangerous territory whether you're a veteran or a rookie. There were people shouting from inside their cars and making quite a lot of animated word play with other drivers mostly because they were getting late for some or the appointment. While dangerous, I don't know why we hate being on the road or for that matter, why we hate each other so much. The first thing that comes to mind while cranking the engine is a clear picture of the destination. I guess this is the reason the return journey always seems shorter, for a drive to an unknown place has no such promise and it blinds the fact that the joy is always in the journey. 

At this stage, I would like to point out to many of the young and aspirational folks out there that while we have great dreams of making it big in this world, carving our names in history books of either our own family or friends; never forget that the joy lies in how we get there. For we are not always remembered for what we achieved, but how we got there. There is an instantaneous urge to overpower others either physically or verbally over petty issues. The world really needs people who spread love and not war. In a nutshell, I would say, train your mind to be as positive as it can be; a mental gym if there is any such thing. Don't be too concerned with things that cannot be controlled, drive safe and stay calm, there are a lot more problems concerning the world than a late arrival to a meeting.