A life without intervals
Worrying about worrying and how adults live a life without any breaks
Hi,
Lately, things have been worrisome.
Obviously, I decided to spend some time worrying about my worries. I made a video about it.
One of the things I did notice is I used to worry less when I was younger. Possibly due to timely breaks and summer vacations as well — which helped slow things down.
It was a brief interval before the next level of difficulties.
Those kinds of intervals don't exist anymore.
You are responsible for making the time to deal with your worries.
Unfortunately, there are no summer vacations or "semester" breaks for adults, where these worries can take a backseat.
And sometimes that makes me feel envious about those who have holidays going on. '
I resonate quite a bit with these lines from the poem ‘Facts of Life’ by Pádraig Ó Tuama.
“That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes even better than good.
That life is often not so good.”
Script
As soon as the calendar changes to April, you start seeing posters of summer camps being distributed around my home.
It is summer vacation.
Students are on a break.
They are in the middle of an interval before they move on to the next stage of their lives.
They can do anything or nothing during this interval.
And I am envious.
Whenever I walk around KR Park these days, I always have a perpetual thought racing in my mind:
Why am I so worried all the time?
Every day, a new random worry gets added on to a never ending list. It’s a shadow that I can’t get rid of. My head is always carrying worries—big, small or random. They are relentless.
To top it off, in your 20s, there are no externally imposed intervals where your worries can take a backseat.
I know my younger self also did a lot of worrying, but maybe it helped that I had pauses in between which allowed me to be less serious.
There was flexibility—to not show up, to zone out, day dream or do nothing. Having that option itself made it easier.
What guides my actions in the present is getting rid of these worries from my looong list.
And what used to guide me when I was younger was a little bit simpler: what’s the most fun way to spend my time.
I find it fascinating that such a radical change occurred when I grew up. I also know I am also responsible for this shift. If this is how I spend my days as an adult, it’s also going to be how I spend the rest of my life.
And I want to avoid that fate.
I don’t want worries to guide me.
I want to follow my innate desires a little bit more.
And I hope to do that without summer vacations.
That’s it for now. If you watched the video, let me know what you think !
How did you spend your summer vacations? What kind of activities did you pursue? I’d love to hear your stories.
Take care,
Nirmal Bhansali