A lot of things have changed in my lifetime. From no computers to smartphones. From dial-up to Wi-fi everywhere. From arranged marriages to live-in relationships.

And some things have come full circle. From reusable glass jars my mom collected to reusable glass jars sold in shops. From home-cooked, organic food to organic food delivered to us for a price.

I remember when I was doing my final year project in engineering. The project was in C, and for some reason, it kept running out of memory. And that’s when I discovered stack overflow and figured out how you can increase the heap size (memory). And now our phones have more memory than what my computer did at that time. Since we had to work with limited memory, the programs we wrote had to be more efficient. Since the hardware was so expensive – we bought additional memory cards and added them to our desktops. Today, we are buying another laptop.

Hand me down were legit things that happened organically across neighbours and friends of your neighbours. Now – people have shops that sell you hand-me-down stuff.

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if we did not have an excess of everything. Most of humanity does not know self-regulation. The need or desire for more is like a bottomless bucket. The world is on the brink of climate change-induced disaster, and we are waging war against each other.

I am also no different. I am writing this blog, but I like hot showers. There is so much hypocrisy inbuilt into our systems. I tell people – they should know the outcomes before starting something, and sometimes I run around like a headless chicken. I know that stress eating is not good for you, but I love eating Indian snacks. I know all the problems in my life are because of me – but I still blame others. As humans, we are trying to conquer space, but we cannot conquer our thoughts. What is the point of moving to Mars when you cannot stop your thoughts?

People at my work are always busy. Anybody I speak to – How are you? 99% of the time, the answer is ‘Busy but good busy’ or ‘A lot is going on’ or something on similar lines. I admit I am busy on some days, but I have a normal day on most days. It’s like being busy is a badge of honour. If you are sitting idle, then there is something wrong with you. We haven’t used 10% of our current phone’s functionality, but we want the next version.

When was the last time you took a step back and just looked at what was happening around you? Are you really listening to the person who is talking to you? Are you truly reading this blog or thinking about what you are doing next?

Life is like an escalator – its job is to keep moving. As conscious humans, we can choose to step aside for at least some time instead of running all the time to nowhere.

In some ways, this blog is leading to nowhere because not everything has to make sense. When was the last time life truly surprised you?