Prema Jayakumar

Is there anyone who is absolutely satisfied with their lives, what they are, where they are, what they are doing? It would be impossible I should think. There is always something that you would like to alter, some other space you would like to fill, some other job you would like to be doing. It is all too human to be discontented. And so you dream of a different life.
It appears to be part of human nature to dream of a different self, a self that is a better one, physically sturdier and healthier, socially more attractive, emotionally more self-reliant, morally stronger. Else why would all the books on self-improvement in any of these fields have such a vast readership, why would the YouTube clippings advising you how to look younger and healthier, how to be wiser and more self-reliant, how to be wealthier and more successful have such a viewership?
Who is not weary of some facet of their life and would not change it for something better? At least in imagination. You may be stuck in a job that you do not like, so that getting up in the morning and getting ready to go to the office itself is painful. It may be a place that life has put you in, a village when you want the pleasures of a city life, a city when you wish to work on the soil, and you find it stifling. It may be a relationship that is abusive, not necessarily physically, but mentally, so that each hour is abrasive. It may be all those good resolutions you had about completing that long-planned book, that weight loss programme you were sure you would be able to stick to, those classes you were going to attend. Your daily schedule may be so crowded that you cannot find a moment to take a deep breath and look around. Who would not like to change all these things and be a different person in a different place and time?
All around you people are telling you that it is possible to change all that with a little will power (the fact that if you had that will power you would not be in the present situation at all is something that most of us ignore).
Of course, peer pressure (this phrase is applicable in late life as in the teenage years, let me assure you) with the next-door neighbour, your best friend of many years, you sister-in-law – all exercising, doing weights, practising yoga, doing stretches, going for walks, jogging – is intense. The idea that you can, with enough motivation, on the right day of the week, and perhaps with the possession of a new diary in which you jot down your progress so that you don’t back-slide, can leave your mistakes and bad habits behind and emerge into the blinding potential you were always destined for, has hold of a lot of us. Is it because most of us believe that but for circumstances, we could have been much greater in some field or the other, we could have achieved much more if we had just pressed a little more, that this obsession with self-improvement catches hold of us? This belief that we were destined for greater things and missed it by a hair’s breadth is ingrained in most of us. We see ourselves as larger than the role that life has assigned to us. And when the world around you tells you that you could still achieve it with a little effort, you feel obliged to put in that effort.
And so the new regimen of exercise, self-improvement, meditation, yoga, dance classes – whatever you had not attempted earlier. It is not necessarily a bad thing to learn a new skill, to exercise your body and brain. The problem arises when these exercises and skills do not make a difference in your life to the extent you expected them to.
Still, it is better to have dreams of renewal, to have dreams of better things, than not to dream at all. Let us say with Maya Angelou, ‘Lift up your eyes/ Upon this day breaking for you./ Give birth again/ To the dream.’
As long as you don’t get too disappointed when the reality falls short of the dream of a slimmer, smarter, more contented self.