Tomorrow is beautiful…..

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

-Albert Einstein

Off late I have been constantly thinking about my present situation of living on my own and how difficult life is despite the fact I have had all the support from my friends & family for as long as I can possibly remember. This emotional instability was not only affecting the way I worked, but also how I behaved during my personal free time.  I kept thinking how it was impossible to control my emotions (… atleast that’s what we tell ourselves..) and that made me feel even more frustrated and disconnected from everyone that cared and loved me.

My friend calls the above phenomenon as “The Caveman Phenomenon”….. After several interactions with my colleagues and friends, I realized that this was quite common among men and even women who live the corporate life (among people commonly referred to as corporate slaves), who are constantly engrossed in work & not having time for themselves until they get out of their work environment. Hence, it is not surprising that the outcome of such high stress and workload encountered on a daily basis is evidently making us Cavemen!

The Cavemen Phenomenon is depicted quite simply in the way Cavemen behave. The person feels too lazy to socialize, prefers the television over human company, orders take-out instead of going to a restaurant, tries to limit conversation with friends and family to single word responses (yes.. no… hmmm), thinks that his own needs/wants are of primary importance to his survival and most importantly does not believe that the future holds any hope for him whatsoever.

When we refer to ‘living in the moment like there is no tomorrow’, we often forget that tomorrow is always better than today. It is one day closer to achieving your life’s goal, even if you might think you never have one. Each of us has a purpose in this world and sometimes we do not realize the purpose until we reach that point in time when we are going to deliver to the purpose itself. But one thing is for certain that each of us know that we are meant for something great, something that will make a difference to this world, to a person, to a situation or to the way we live our life.

When my friend explained to me how we ruin our present by being the Caveman, it finally struck me…. All along we have been told ‘live in the moment’, ‘make the most of now’, ‘tomorrow never comes’… and due to these subconscious thoughts, we look at the short term benefits rather than focusing on the big picture that brings long term happiness. We have been raised in a world of fast returns to our investments and all we can think about is how quickly we can make things work right now. This attitude has given rise to an inherent behavior of being impatient with every aspect of our life. Whether it is finding the perfect job, the house of our dreams, the desired lifestyle and even true love… We can’t be patient and wait for our dreams to become a reality tomorrow, we want them to happen NOW.

Don’t get me wrong, but I am not trying to undermine the present or not learn from the past. I am trying to emphasize on the spectacular future we can treasure, only if we are patient enough today. I am not saying that we stay blindsided and go with the flow with blind hope that the future will miraculously change. It should indeed be our inherent nature to question every situation we are in and work to make it better, but at the same time, be patient and put in the effort to change any circumstance in our life for the better. And most importantly be happy today and never lose hope that we will be happier tomorrow.