through the years

We live a very busy life. One where we are caught up in work for the most part of our days and the remaining is spent on keeping abreast with whatever is happening around us – FOMO seems to have emerged as the biggest dread of our lives. So much that our decisions about our own selves are driven by the impressions left by the influencers around us.

Everything we do should make the maximum eyeballs roll in our direction; that too in awe and aspiration. We ought to tell the world how happening we are, to be admired, to be looked up to, to be liked, to be followed, to be loved. Loved? Well, at least superficially.

It is the shiny new pragmatic age, where real emotions do not exist anymore. No one has time for such obsolete shit. We live the new, beautifully packaged life.

And we shall enter the new year riding the same high tide!

Sad but true, isn’t it?

Sad. But is it really true? You really think real emotions are nothing more than a fallacy these days?

Have you ever studied how a business evolves? Hmmm…let me help you do that right now. Think of your favorite product, one that you’ve been using for years. Could be anything. Look at it closely. Think of how it has changed with time. You would most definitely observe that it has:

• Become more beautiful today than it ever was
• Become easier to use; more compact; easier to handle and carry around
• Become a brand name and has an improved logo with best packaging ever
• Much more compelling ads and campaigns
• Become more expensive owing to the new (probably more advanced) features and image
• More variants available today, than it ever had. Some of which don’t even make sense to you.
• Despite of all its goodness, deteriorated in quality and does not serve its original purpose as well as it did in early years
• Greater competition today, some of which are actually better
• Gone down in its overall value for money
• More polarized user reviews today, than it ever had
• More convenience and prestige value attached to it today which keeps you loyal

This is how businesses make money. They launch a new product and attach a big promise with it. They make sure that the promise is fulfilled in the beginning, at times even going beyond and resulting in delighted customer. The resulting satisfaction hooks you to the product and as you become a more loyal customer, the product becomes savvier at making more money for its producer while going easy on the promise. It becomes flashier and more attractive while lagging in its ability to satisfy you the same way as it used to. But you are comfortably attached and do not want to risk starting a new relationship with another all over again.

Where are you even going with all this dude?

Try replacing the product you chose earlier with your life now. Don’t you think, over the years, your life has evolved the same way too? Became convenient and glossy while dropping badly in substance? It, too, is all about the exterior now – all about presentation and packaging – while struggling on the inside.

Quite similar, right? Right. But there is, however, a very significant difference between your favorite product and this life of yours. While the product is developed by some company out there, your life is produced by the very person reading these words right now. Yes, you! It’s you who is responsible for letting your life go haywire in chasing all the shiny shenanigans while letting it deteriorate in terms of true emotions and attachments.

You started off with the promise of a happy, fulfilling life with your loved ones but in this journey your quest increasingly morphed into an effort of beautifying your image, over the years, for the whole wide world to love, leaving behind your originally self and the ones who really mattered as collateral damage. Just like a company leaves its original promise and consumers behind in its quest for bigger chunk of revenues and market share.

You, and I, my friend, have given up loving and being loved in our quest for a greater share of income and public approval.

Oh, come on man, it’s the New Year!

Indeed, it is. I wish you have more honest and heartfelt years ahead – richer in actual substance, not just the image.

Happy living!