common sense not so common

Daily Ritual Think about your day. Select one of your daily rituals and explain it to us: why do you do what you do? How did you come to adopt this ritual? What happens on days when you can’t perform it?

We all do sleep and we all do wake up. The time zone is very different and so are the habits. As a ritual some wake up with the sun rise, sleep with the sun set and that is healthy, but not so normal anymore. Nowadays sleeping late and getting up early is normal. Normal is whatever is accepted by everyone even if it is not okay.

Work occupies our mind, our time and sadly even extends into our personal time. I remember work was something people used to do in office only. At home they lived a life and on weekends enjoyed a happy-family-time. What changed now? We got technology, we moved from computers, that were not portable, to laptops that could be carried back to home.

Bundles of papers and files are mere excel sheets and presentations, and they can even be carried in our smart phones. We just can not say no to work – it is there in front of us all the time, In our hand to be precise. Staring at us, mocking us (okay, I am just being too much).

But consider this; sending mails, receiving mails, talking over the phone, Skype conferences, WhatsApp work-groups (now that is too much) – as much these decrease the distance between the two people involved, they increase pressure of finishing a job at hand as quickly as possible – well, just because it is possible. Thus, leading to more work load. No one wants to miss a deadline now do they?

And to get out of all of this I have my rituals. As I see it, life will keep giving us new things to deal with and the work load is not going to get reduced. So the stress is inevitable and all we need is an escape, a temporary refuge. I have adopted very basic habits. The ones that are very famous but to be honest very very neglected.

It is easy to say and a little difficult to make time for your good habits when you are so hard pressed under time and that is why I do it. I came to adopt this idea of conscious breathing about four or five years ago. I do get up a half an hour early in the morning just to do some light exercises. The blood rush just sets me up straight for the whole day of hard work ahead of me.

I also believe in taking long quiet walks, or a little cardio, even listening to music and taking a walk in the park can do the magic, just find your escape and it should involve only you and your thoughts, that is the only rule. Meditation is not everyone’s cup of tea. I struggle at times, but whenever it goes well the results are just so amazing, more like addictive! Transcendental!

Working and relaxing – my concept. Take a break, perhaps a kit-kat (reference haha) why not? But take a break while your work. Hold your thoughts, be conscious and take a deep breath again hold your thoughts, that is how I do it. There is just too much in our heads and that is what leaves us with a feeling of exhaustion.

And whenever I wake up late and am not able to complete my morning ritual I do it on the go. It does bother me, not being able to do it in my quiet and comfortable room, but I wait until I reach the subway. There I put my music on and focus only on the music – is losing yourself into something not equivalent to meditating? So, I rest my case.

Not to mention science suggests that keeping a smiling face has positive effects on our body so one can do that too. Although, it seems a little weird just because it is not normal to see someone smile all the time.

But music is a good way to let loose. Basically, Just being conscious helps me and like I mentioned earlier, it is not very common. Do not under-estimate the power of being conscious and taking a conscious break. It is better than wasting that coffee break in gossiping – sometimes it is okay though – mostly when its something funny.

Overload Alert: Are we overloaded with information and losing common sense?

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” — Gertrude Stein.

Yes or no? I think it depends, right?

We are fed with information every minute of the day, every now and then we find out something new from some one, for example; the countless ways of doing a task, finding out that there’s no one sure shot technique to achieve success, which celebrity did the dirty deed… things like that so on and so forth. At times, the information is irrelevant and other times useless, occasionally useful too. Anyways, we have two eyes, two ears and we can not help but fill ourselves up with the information fed to us, we have to bear the good, the bad and the ridiculous too.

So, as the world runs its rat race, everyone in the name of being “informed” does the same thing – save it all up, book mark everything and then just devour each word of every article, every online information, news, updates etc. whenever they get the chance (some read while walking). There’s more of consumption than there is actual material available to be shared or understood, so in case something is not interesting people just paint it the way they want to, and thus begins the circle of rumours leading to confusions all around us. it has become difficult to see the right from the wrong, useful from useless, true from false, and like they say – nothing seems black or white anymore everything is different shades of gray, common sense is no more common. And there comes into the scene Gertrude Stein’s quote, with all the craziness around it is actually surprising and rare to see someone use their common sense.

Yes, we are over loaded with so much internet-knowledge and everything is just one google-search away, which is good. So why use common sense when phones are smart? And they do help us in many ways, brilliantly. It is because with this trend, In future common sense would be a far fetched concept and honestly, sometimes it seems like it is already – now a days for some people, going to a doctor is secondary to an online checkup – a normal pain in the arm would list a thousand diseases leaving out one actual problem loss of common sense. If someone doesn’t feel well, they need to see a doctor not look it up online. If that’s not losing common sense then what is?

We are surrounded by good, bad, offensive, potentially harmful information, lets just follow the old rule: believe only what we witness and talk only when we are fully aware (I guess, that in itself is common sense). I believe experts know their fields, we should trust them more. Books are relatable, we should read them. Media is doing its job, we should just let them. We all have brains, we should use them. Finally, life’s about living, we should live it… being in our senses, though.