We live in a society that is always complaining of lack of time. Everybody is busy. Everybody is running around, some of us like headless chickens. Even sadhus and monks are very busy. Are we really busy with what is important to us? Or are we wasting our time?
I find that entertainment is the fastest growing industry. About 30 years we only had the option with two channels and standalone movie theaters. Now, our televisions beam 600-700 channels. There are multiplexes where you can see movies from six o'clock in the morning to one o'clock in the morning. And along with that, there are Netflix and other OTT channels, not to mention YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all of social media. It will be amazing if we examine our lives to see how much time is spent between entertainment and social media.
I agree that all of us require some entertainment in our lives to relax. So, if there is really a good program that you want to watch on TV or any music it is a focused activity. But do you really want to spend four hours in front of the TV/screen in the name of entertainment and relaxation. Rather than relaxing, it is mind numbing and eating up into your precious time. One has to remember that time is not money. Time is life itself. If time was money, you could exchange one for the other but you cannot.
Therefore, when we say we are busy, one really needs to take a good long look at one's own life and see what is it that we are busy with. Are we busy with what is really important to us? Like work, creation of wealth, family relationships, parenting? No, they are entirely different. Can we think of family entertainment where we bond with the family rather than everyone sitting glued to their phones? Can we focus on what is important to us? Once we focus on what's really important to us, we will find that we have much more time than what we thought.
The writer is the founder of Aarsha Vidya Foundation. You can write to him at aarshavidyaf@gmail.com
(To receive our E-paper on WhatsApp daily, please click here. To receive it on Telegram, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)
