Don’t worry! I am not going to digress into a corporate mumbo jumbo. This is still pertinent to the musings of a traveler, just the exception that this time these profound thoughts came in on work travel.
We have all had those random shit work days where you get nothing accomplished but are totally physically and mentally drained out by the end of the day. Well today was one of those days for me. It was the usual day business trip which essentially translates to 2 hours in the cab to and fro from the airport, 1 hour in the airport, 2 hours in the airplane one way. And once you arrive at the destination, it’s another 2 hours reaching the meeting place, 30 minutes of waiting for the person to get free and then a discussion for 30 minutes and again the 2 hour drive back to the airport.
Its no wonder you see frustrated corporate professionals in the airport frantically standing in queues hoping that their standing will make time go faster or that it will help in reaching the destination sooner.
Usually, I am one of those frustrated souls at the airport. But today somehow I was a little distanced from it, maybe cause I had a new toy in the form of noise cancellation headphones to play around with, but for whatever reason, I plugged it on after reaching the airport and watched everyone on Mute. Believe me, when I say this, my flight was delayed by over half an hour and I did not even notice.
There I was watching a ‘Tamasha’ enfolding around me. Some corporate professionals with their laptops on and huge number of slides presentation in the making, another incessantly screaming out irrelevant things (at least to those in his vicinity in a public place) trying very hard to get things done in a place where he is not present, some gorging away on food they wouldn’t spend on if it wasn’t sponsored by the company, others grazing about talking on the phone saying “Halat Kharap Ho Gaya, flight 20 mins delay ho gaya, kal subah panvel jaana hai” (My situation has got really worse, my flight has been delayed by over 20 mins and I was planning to travel to Panvel tomorrow morning).
Now, this guy screaming this sitting right behind me caught my attention. The flight was late by a sheer 20 minutes and here this guy sits weeping about it for an hour till boarding saying how ‘this 20 minutes’ is going to ruin a tomorrow.
It really got me thinking, that is exactly what we do every day. How long are we going to keep running for a better future just to realize that by the time you’ve arrived there you’ve already lost the present you? You reach that goal and all of a sudden you realize you’re not the same person anymore. Instead, you have is a big deep void that unnerves you, makes you uncomfortable to such an extent that you think this is not good enough any longer and set your carrot a little further away, put your blinders on and are again on that very same vicious cycle.
For every second we keep micro analyzing if this was the right thing to do, did I say more than I should have, am I doing something productive right now, is this adding any value to me? we leave the most important things to us go unnoticed. In the bigger scheme of things, yes these questions are pertinent, I am no fan of living like a saint with no ambition, but to beat yourself up for every minute of everyday is too much.
With this profound enlightenment, I spent all the journey of my flight blissfully at that window seat (which I was cursing about while doing a web-check in) with a view of the moonlit cloudy skies listening to music I had not enjoyed in a really long time.
As the flight landed gradually navigating its way to the gate, I was packed and ready to stand once the seatbelt sign was off. The race was back on!