A life of exhaustion

Saiqa Jan
These days when I hear people conversing, they seem to be discussing a lot about not being able to take time for themselves, have a long-overdue get-together with friends, or a trip they need to a place where they could relax and shed away all the baggage and burdens of responsibilities. These days whoever I talk to seems to be caught up in things, some in their 9-5 routine, some in their hustle of growing their enterprise. Some in their never-ending pursuit of studies and some in the battles in their heads. So much so that often it feels like we are operating as robots, who are running on a particular command in code to complete a particular form of circle throughout the day. A never-ending circle where there is no way out and all you do is go round and round only to end up at the same place from where you commenced the journey. For quite some time I thought it was just me, who was feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities, expectations, obligations, commitments and duties but now that I am reflecting on every single conversation I’ve had for the past few months I realise that all of us are living the same life- A life of exhaustion. We are all exhausted in one way or another and we all have our fair share of issues and matters that need to be tended to and resolved. But I guess we all are too busy, too occupied, too caught up to just stop for a minute and take a breather.
All of us are apprehensive of what our future will look like if we stop for a second here. We are so engrossed in these lives of exhaustion we are leading, that taking a day, an hour, a minute or even a second for ourselves has somewhat gone out of the question for us. We are running around, pushing through boundaries, striving to be our best selves and achieving some unrealistic and superficial goals, but are we being the best of ourselves? Are we really living lives as we are going through time and space in this world? Are we enjoying the limited time we have here before our journey ends and we are pushed to the other side? Or have we just lost ourselves to the hustles of this life? I do not know how just within the past decade life became so fast-paced, especially here in Kashmir. Everything seems to be running on autopilot and never halting. Everyone here seems to be in a race against something and it is unfathomable to me to decide what or who everyone including me is running against. This loop just seems to tug people in and never let them out. In the world, we live in today, Where technological advancements have crossed the limits of human expectations and have raised both the standards and the ideals of the human lifestyle, we seem to be swimming in a pool of demands where reaching the final post is almost impossible. We are being bombarded with content online that shapes and defines our lives and the state of our mental health and drags us towards this loop of exhaustion. As much as life was supposed to get easier with modern refinements, it has become rather draining. We all make sure that we have the luxuries and all the amenities that would make our lives easier but where is the ease? We follow these celebrities, these influencers, these idols that are only human like ourselves but we regard them highly and try and act or lead a life like they do without realising that in doing so we are losing the very essence of our soul. We are losing our identity and trying to be someone who might or might not be portraying the truth online. Our exhaustion comes from within us. We are charring ourselves to achieve a life of fame, power and recognition. This goes for every single one of us because all of us are grilling ourselves at our allotted echelons. You see this exhaustion of fulfilling every criterion for a perfect life has taken us anywhere but perfection. It has flawed our design and those flaws are what surface as mental health issues.
With an unending urge to be the best among our lot, we are dragging ourselves through hellholes mentally and pushing our boundaries with little to no aid to hold and support us from the fall. Let’s go back a decade and re-visit the lives that were much simpler and easier than the ones we are leading right now and understand at what point in time we started piling up this load on our backs. I believe that this piece of advanced technology called Smartphones which we hold in our hands through the night and day from dawn till dusk has a lot to do with the exhaustion we are faced with currently. Then add up the spice of social media and boom! Our exhaustion goes up a hundred notches. The continuous flow of unnecessary information has put our brains in an overdrive of processing, perceiving and absorbing the content. It is a miracle to not go insane with such an ebb and flow of information. Every day we are hit by a storm of all sorts of content, some of it makes us happy some makes us sad, some gets us all riled up and some pushes us through the depths of despair. We are but humans with a limited capacity for cognitive and emotional abilities yet we overwork ourselves. Videos, Reels, Games, Texts, Calls, chats, Posts, Comments, Likes, and shares, it is all like a neatly woven spider web which rarely lets you out once you are caught in it. Even the makers had chosen the name “website” so wisely. They knew what they were getting people into. Now, I am not saying that everything is just bad about it. Most of the time we have the best use for our smartphones. Often they prove to be the best aid when needed desperately. But let’s not forget that its pros in no way outweigh its cons. The rise in mental and emotional health issues, growing number of suicides, personality issues, crime rates, divorces, familial discords and physical health issues all can be linked in one or the other to the excessive use of these handheld devices. By watching and listening to sensitive content daily, we have become desensitized and used to it, so much so that our basic human skills crucial for coexistence like tolerance, understanding, patience, respect, empathy, and our ability to interact have gone out the window. We have put people and ourselves on a pedestal and we are not ready to accept flaws, Imperfections, shortcomings, and limitations of ourselves or others. This raises our expectations of people and ourselves to unachievable heights, raising our standards and adding more and more to our exhaustion as we see ourselves falling short or failing. This exhaustion is the reason behind our busy lives. We are all busy trying to fill the void whilst life passes us by. So why not just prioritise life over exhaustion and make sure that every day we take some time out for ourselves? Say an hour a day, and in that hour try and interact with our inner selves. Make time to just let ourselves wander in our heads, explore the corners that hold the exhaustion within us and let it go so that we can have some much-needed peace and ease.

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