Cushions help cushion the blow we get on a daily basis. Oh what we get on a daily basis? The ice cream shop is closed, the brown Haute Curry handbag to go with those Catwalk pumps are missing, the tan socks have gone for wash.
City life makes everything comfortable, whether it comes to food or work, most of it is all about easy access to things within a 5 km radius. Desk job, a cushion chair, the need for air-conditioning in every place we go, be it at work, home or malls; I'm sure even beaches will come up with AC rooms soon for the so-called 'privileged' to hang out at. By privileged, I mean the ones who have no idea how beautiful life can be, without these extremities that man invented.
A house these days is incomplete without atleast 2 ACs. Lifestyle diseases come and go due to this. Human body is not supposed to handle this much comfort. In Tamil, there's a saying: 'Odamba kadambaala adi'. It means we're supposed to push ourselves out of these comfort zones, sweat as much as we can. There has to be a certain limit to the comforting atmosphere. We get used to using cabs and autos so much, that we tend to even forget that there is a thing known as buses or trains, connecting every part of the city.
Almost everyone has diabetes or symptoms for cancer at least. Every website or magazine advertises material things 'that are supposed to make you feel better'. Even in the office we need cushions. That too the fancy ones, with a Buddha painting or a silhouette of an Egyptian woman carrying water...if only we knew about the water crisis in so many places.
A joke that I came across recently:
'Mom, are all these gifts from Santa?'
'Yes dear.'
'So you didn't get me a darn thing this year too didn't you?'
Gifting each other during birthdays, anniversaries and holiday seasons has made this world a much materialistic place to be. Someone posts their birthday cake on Instagram. Someone else feels bad that they've never had a cake or a party. Someone posts a plate of pasta that one has. The other person thinks how sad his life is, even though he'll be having a wholesome healthier meal than thou.
“Whenever material things, money, worldliness, become the center of our lives, they take hold of us, they possess us; we lose our very identity as human beings,” Pope Francis insists.
The Pope explains that people must be on guard against “the danger of complacency, comfort, worldliness in our lifestyles and in our hearts, of making our well-being the most important thing in our lives.”
When materialism takes over, we “end up becoming self-absorbed and finding security in material things which ultimately rob us of our face, our human face.”
This further leads to more self-indulgence, bitterness, insecurities and being intolerant towards things that need more effort to get to.
When Starbucks had a sale of any fancy Frappuccinos at Rs. 100 one day, we didn't mind taking a good 4 hours of our lives to wait for one cup of coffee, all of which ended up tasting the same anyway.
With the growth of communication at a supersonic pace, it is tough to not lust about the advancements in modern equipment that are, unsurprisingly, being advertised as 'a must have' by many websites and magazines. The need for ordering food online, the need for ready-to-make food items, the need for cool accessories, the obsessive need for getting a fancy latte wherever we go, are things that we can do without. Even 15 years back we didn't have such easy access to items that need no cooking whatsoever, it made us better planners and we were very well equipped to do things with our own hands.
A week is incomplete without visiting a mall. The day is incomplete without a cup of Starbucks for our instant feeding and the Insta feed. Starbucks opened in India five years ago. When Café Coffee Day started in India, every kid would hang out there after school hours. A person is now defined, or rather, fit into a box, based on what all things he uses, the vehicle he drives and the brands he's advertising through his clothing, leading to a train of thought that a person with a basic nokia phone, simple shirt and trousers and using public transport is seen as a simpleton, while another one showing off his branded sunglasses in social media through a photo he clicked with an expensive mobile phone, with a luxury car in background is considered smart alec.
But truth is, the 'simpleton' can sleep at night peacefully, while the smart alec tosses and turns lying in bed, checking his Insta feed occasionally.
In conclusion, though our lives are filled with equipment and gadgets to comfort us, we are, in fact, slaves of technology thus adding to the endless produce-use-dispose cycle, leading to an increase of toxic elements that poisons our natural resources, apart from our own state of mind.
That is not to say do not use technology, but use it to a minimum and not spend on stuff that we can live without.
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