Did you watch the stars last night?

The typical urban dwellers or urbanites as we city dwellers are called these days live on clock work. Every activity in our daily life is time bound, be it the time to catch a bus / metro or to meet a deadline to submit a report or to meet clients and close a deal or to even eat a meal. Each day is a marathon starting from getting out of bed to the time we hit the sack. We run according to the clock or the clock runs us, whichever way you see it. I even know a gentleman, who while preparing for some tests (this was a long time ago in college) used to have a time-table with time breaks therein named “Go to toilet”! Now that was taking time management a bit too far, but exist it did.

A study conducted by a popular research firm came out with statistics which said almost 40% of the total population lives in cities and cities are going to account for 70% of new jobs created. Mind you the former statistic is a growing number, which means people in growing economies are migrating to cities from the rural areas. In short, within a decade, we will have half the world filled with time bound urban drones.

If you look at it logically, there is nothing wrong with it. Time wasted is time lost, you can’t earn it back like money. However, in today’s world of bench-marking, efficiency tracking, productivity consulting and max output in min time, we somehow lose track of the purpose of the whole exercise. That is when we need to ask our-self, whether what we are doing is actually what we want to do or need to do. Well, that is a larger topic to be discussed in a different blog! The topic we started out with was stars at night.

So, did you watch the stars last night? Let me re-frame it; when did you last watch the stars at night? If you took more than ten seconds to answer that question, it has been a hell of a long time since you took a holiday. In this cocoon we innovatively organize our-self into (that is another productivity jargon I learned this week J “ Innovatively organize” ), we sometimes miss out on the fact that our body  and mind needs some rest too. We get into that Mr.Miyagi rhythm of “Wax on! Wax off!” day in and day out that we forget that the fence is not going anywhere!

A change in rhythm, a different feel of place, air, water, food and people really help in shocking the body out of a monotone. This said shock being more relaxing and rejuvenating than other-wise. Such a break or vacation from the routine that we live, helps in sitting back and reflecting about our life too, which exercise may bring about a better perspective of things which in turn may make us more efficient or productive. That time which we give our-self is immeasurable in terms of value. It is the “Me” time, wherein the other burdens of life don’t encroach.  

Let us return to the stars. Being in a city, with all the city lights and pollution around, the question should as well be “Can you bloody see any stars at all in the night?”  So if you took more than ten seconds to answer the question in paragraph 4 above, then you better get packing for that vacation to recharge your body, mind and soul. Further, with the bounty of information about vacation spots on the net and plenty options of travel we don’t actually need to wait for Santa to come out to take a vacation.  It can be anytime during the year.

So be your own Santa, pack your bags and take off to some idyllic location where you can gaze at the stars at night in all their glory embracing you into their world, without the fear of the alarm the next morning!