The Delights and Distraction #108: Are you unsettled?

There seems to be a phenomenon lately, where many of our friends and peers are feeling “unsettled”. 

Unsettled is the only word that seems appropriate to describe the weird vagaries of modern life; a life where many of us are led to feel inadequate or not quite at our full potential, in the context of all the digital media that we are consuming.

Only a little over a couple of decades ago, the average person in India had just two sources of information - their subscribed newspaper and Doordarshan  - which would take an hour, tops, out of their day. That’s one hour out of 16 waking hours, so 6%. The rest 94% was spent conversing with others, working, engaging in hobbies, reading and (if you were 13 years old and immensely bored) making prank calls. 

Today, they say the average person spends almost 6-8 hours a day consuming digital content in some form or the other (which includes reading this newsletter :)). That’s 50% of our waking hours. What happens to our minds when we spend half of our waking time watching other people? What happens when our thoughts and desires are shaped by taking in others’ experiences, as opposed to just living our lives? 

We feel this sense of hopeless inadequacy acutely, even as a brand; where other upstarts have come in and seem to be doing bigger, better, more. The relentless everyday comparison is exhausting. 

So for ourselves, we have actively tried to carve out non-screen time in our days so that our neurons can latch on to something else. It’s one of the reasons we started the book club, to instill a read-a-book--a-month discipline into our lives, taking our night-time routine away from the screen. 

In fact our book club is meeting today! The book club declared the last book unreadable, and so we decided to bring in our favourite poetry to this meet-up. We’ll share some of the poems in our next newsletter. And if you happen to be in Delhi, and would like to join the Viv & Ami book club, reply to this email and we will sort you out.

And now for some of our favourite things of the past couple of weeks:

Quotes: 

"Avoiding mistakes is an underrated way to improve. It's easier to fend off a bad day than achieve a perfect day. Rather than do your best, avoid your worst."

- James Clear

“Once in Hawaii, I was taken to see a Buddhist temple.

In the temple, a man said: ‘I’m going to tell you something that you will never forget.’

And then he said, ‘To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven.The same keys open the gates of hell.’"

- Richard Feynman

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So, go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”
 - L.R. Knost

Poem:

For My Wife, Reading in Bed
I know we’re living through all the dark we can afford.
I’ll match your inward quiet, breath for breath.
Thank goodness, then, for this moment’s light
What else do we have but words and their absences
and you, holding the night at bay
– a hint of frown,
those focussed hands, that open book.
to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart;
to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny
and significant? Whatever it is you are reading now
my love, read on. Our lives depend on it.
– John Glenday

Thanks for reading, and for being here.

Till our next newsletter, may your coffee be strong and your enemies weak,

With love,

Viv & Ami