Shadow Life
During my growing up years, in my quest to stay competitive with people in my age group, I was suggested by a teacher that I need to work on my vocabulary, both in spoken words as well as in written documents. I remember, he suggested me a small book titled, " How to improve your vocabulary in 30 days". Though I used to read daily newspaper those days, yet that book introduced me to host of new words.
One such word which I learnt that time was " vicarious". The dictionary meaning of this word was " experiencing in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person". When I probed meaning of this word further with my teacher, he explained, giving example of cinema movie and cricket match, that as the scene unfolds on screen, in case of cinema, and on the field in case of cricket match, we experience the feeling of joy, sadness, anger and ecstasy, without ourselves being actually going through what we see on the screen or field.
Since we are a cricket frenzy country, I shall like to elaborate that a little more for clear understanding of this word. Say, when India is batting and our favourite player hits a 4 or a 6, you get a feeling of ecstasy as if you have hit those shots. Similarly, when our bowler bowls out player of other side, you literally get a sensation that you bowled out that guy. So while you are not playing on the field, but your whole body gets that sensation of pleasure and satisfaction. Such pleasure is called "vicarious entertainment". This experience can be replicated in other activities, like cinema movies and plays/drama we watch on TV or YouTube etc. There are many instances when you see people sobbing during a movie and coming out with moist eyes as the movie ends, like ' Tare Zameen pai, Kabhi Khushi kabhi gham, Baghban etc'.
Coming back to the life we are living, with so many cricket matches, including IPL matches (of late State IPL matches are also in the offing) happening every year, and then there are similar matches on other sports, like Kabaadi, Football, Badminton and now hockey is also in spotlight, and as if TV programmes were not enough, there is nowadays spate of new releases/old movies & dramas on OTT platform, like Netflix, Prime video and Sonyliv etc, and that omnipresent YouTube...........to make sure that people tuned in live a vicarious life. I call that kind of life as shadow life. Whatever time is still left with us, we have a kid on block, your most expensive and most adorable gadget, your Mobile, and your unending appetite for worst minefield, WhatsApp, which consumes most of your time.
To elaborate my point further, I say if we like a particular sport, say cricket, badminton, football, basketball etc, we should be better playing it ourselves; if we like songs and dances, we should be doing that all by ourselves, unmindful of how well we can do that professionally, instead of having vicarious entertainment by watching others perform. Suggest that we may think of associating with some social cause where the benefit of our efforts and time goes in uplifting the other party, who is not directly related to us.......like they call giving back to society.
Suggest that we take a leaf out of our School times, where we used to have different periods for different subjects, like Physics, Chemistry, Maths, English, PT etc, with a recess break for chit-chatting, and flirting too, thus enjoying the whole day. Similar time-slots can now be fixed for ourselves for various self-activities, where we play a character, instead of
The question therefore is what is that I am living and what is my life and where it is. Yes, to the extent we live and shoulder our family responsibilities and live our official and social roles well, that is perfectly fine, but how you live your time in between is a big cause of concern and we all need to be watchful... for ourselves and for all our near & dears for whom we are responsible.
Yes, true, search for purpose of life has eluded philosophers of all shade and hue, and all the great saints of all times, and therefore I shall hold back myself to delve further on this subject, but then for myself, and most of us alike, the life we are living is certainly not the purpose of this life.
Find your mojo and see how best you can pursue that.........in an attempt to give some value to the life you are living.