It's OK

Feels like I am writing after a long time. I guess the reason being I have not written anything during the holidays. It is summer vacation for Indian schools here. I went for a walk yesterday after finishing yoga and I did not bother about how long I took to walk 5km. I usually time it for various reasons (which I will talk about in sometime), but yesterday I just walked without looking at the time. Of course I had the luxury of time, as it was a holiday but honestly it had nothing to do with having more time. 

It hit me how all our lives we keep competing with various things. So in general, competition exists in academics - studying well, scoring good marks, joining a prestigious college and eventually joining a big company. And competition exists in sports - it is called competitive sports right - where the one and only goal is to come first or win. 

What hit me the most was how we put so much pressure on ourselves to - the list is endless - move faster, do faster, do more of everything, do that, do this, win this, succeed in this - it is literally endless - and when we pause to think about what this is doing to us, we realize that it is killing the joy out of everything we do! I am not referring to kids here, I am referring to what we do to ourselves. (One can only imagine what children are learning from us and how it could affect children) All our fears and anxieties are because we want to do more, we want to come first, we want to do it this way - imagine how life would be if we just do everything without that self inflicted pressure. We would still do everything, but in a joyful manner, because it is ok if we do less, it is ok if we do it slower, it is ABSOLUTELY OK - and this less/slow etc is so relative that there is no end to this comparison. 

Let us just remember to tell ourselves that it is ABSOLUTELY OK about every single thing we do because it really is ok as long as we keep trying. The key here is to keep doing it (whatever it is), not giving up and doing it consistently.  

May sound crazy, but every cuppa reminds me that it is ok!