Life Without Technology

Last week my computer crashed and my life suddenly came to a standstill. Every morning the first thing that I do is go to weather.com to figure out what would be the appropriate clothing for the day depending on the forecast, especially in winters. Anything that I ever needed an answer for, Google came in handy and whoever writes on pen and paper any more? Now Microsoft office applications take care of everything. It takes care of capitalizing the letters for us, making sure we didn’t leave too much or too little space between the words or if the spellings were correct or not. Everything is being taken care of by my computer.

My life went helter skelter. All I ever talked to anyone that whole week was how sad I had been coz I didn’t have an access to the Internet and I had been totally cut off from the rest of the world. I tried various stores to have my computer fixed but nothing really worked and ultimately decided to wait until we buy a new on.

I walked out of my house one day and suddenly realized, much to my shock that the fall season was almost over. My backyard is so full of fallen leaves now that I wondered how I never saw that before. As always, when I got up next morning, I walked over to my work table when I remembered that my laptop does not work any more. Not knowing what to do I sleepily walked outside. As soon as I opened the door the fresh cool breeze touched my face and I was awake. It felt so refreshing to be outside on a pleasant morning. The last vestige of the fall colors still looked beautiful. I took in the beauty of the nature before my restless self took over.

Sitting still even for 10 minutes was hard. I would go back to my work room every 10 minutes to see in case my computer changed its mind and decided to work!! After a while my desperation and frenzy got on my nerves and I decided to take it easy. With this realization, my mind started navigating me through some wonderful collection of books and music that I had. I had bought them over the years but never found enough time to read them all. I decided to look around and explore some more. In the evening I went out for a walk in the woods to enjoy the fall colors. I had seen them all a zillion times on the Internet, as 10 beautiful places etc…but seeing them or feeling them through my senses in person gave me an entirely different perspective. The expanse which was missing on that 17” screen was overwhelming. I felt like a part of it, not some objective spectator. I also met with some friends there. I had been chatting with them on a regular basis online but looking into their eyes and exchanging smiles rather than smileys and using gestures rather than some incomprehensible abbreviations felt different.

I started to wonder, although it’s true that the technology has given us endless opportunities to explore things and brings home on our table the entire world, but it also takes away our power to analyze things. We have forgotten out ability to browse our mind and look for the answers or explanations inside, the quest for wisdom and truth is just one Google or Yahoo away. It does the analyzing for us, searching for us and viewing for us. There’s nothing that we cannot possibly do online. Buying, selling, dating, reading, writing, even marriage. That reminds me of an 8 year old child whose dad was looking for some information on the Indian god (Ganesha). He went to the temple, called up the priest and also his family in India. His daughter a little amazed at him said, “Dad I wonder why you are running around so much for this piece of information? Just go to ganesha.com and you are done”.

However, it should not be misconstrued as me having anything against the technology per se. It is an enormous tool to make our life a lot easier. But aren’t we doing away with the power of thinking, reasoning or analyzing? It should be used as a tool to enrich our lives without getting too dependent on it.

Technology, no doubt is making our life a lot easier and smarter but, meaningful……….??

Power of Visualisation

It was a near death experience. A couple of years ago we were returning from Los Angeles. I was on the driver’s seat driving my corolla with 5 people in the car including my 2 year old daughter. The sunlight is very strong during summers in California and many would agree with me that driving on a highway for long hours is quite exhausting especially when we are traveling with kids. My eyes were getting dilated because of the blazing sunlight. I started speeding up and exceeded the speed limit beyond the capacity of a car like corolla, why? Well that’s another story altogether. And suddenly I found myself parked at the top of a hill right at the edge, my car almost completely smashed from where all I could see was nothing as nothing really was there after that; no reference point, we were just steps away from falling into that ditch which must have been around 1000ft deep. What happened I didn’t know. I was told later on that my car went on to a rough patch and at that high speed I kind of lost control and got hit by a trailer truck. My car went off balance and in the state of nervousness instead of slamming on my break pedal, I started accelerating further. I very faintly remember hearing some sounds yelling break, break, break……… and somehow the car stopped with a jolt. I kept looking at my daughter if she was ok…………..

That incident had shaken me up so bad that for a long time to come driving had become almost impossible for me; in fact sitting in the car with any other driver would also bother me if I saw a truck in the next lane. I, however, tried to hide it from everybody as I was ashamed to admit the fact. I would try and avoid the lane next to a truck and would try and go to the farthest lane possible. My husband would understand what was going on why I am suddenly changing lane but he would pretend not to acknowledge that ………. Once we were returning from Niagara after a vacation trip and I insisted that it’s ok for me to drive, I can do this I told my husband. The long highways typically have only 2 lanes. He tried to warn me but gave up ……….I was doing fine until I saw that killer truck (I used to call it in my mind) to my right lane. I started pulling back and slowed down way too much, there was a huge line of cars tailgating angrily behind me, and some of them even honked. I was nervous, I wanted to speed up pass the truck and then change lanes to give them a pass. But I couldn’t. I was sweating all over. Howsoever I tried doing that, that image of getting hit by that truck kept flashing in front of my eyes…….

I reached home completely distraught and embarrassed. Why was it so hard for me to do that? I kept wondering. I have read zillions of books on how to overcome fear how to be calm and composed and be positive even in the worst of circumstances, then why did I forget them? Why is fear overpowering me so much that I am getting almost paralyzed on the road while driving? I have read Deepak Chopra talking about the power of Visualization, seen Barbara Streisand talk on TV that our visualization is very powerful. And Anthony Robins, Robin Sharma and many more ………. then still why am I not being able to implement that? All my knowledge and reading is false if I am not able to put that into practice.
I decided to make a change. I would overcome my fear through the power of visualization. Every night before going to bed I visualized myself passing the trucks without any fear. I did that for quite some time. The result was not dramatic though. I didn’t see that happening for quite sometime but I didn’t give up. I practiced that everyday. I spoke in a different language to myself. Instead of saying “no it’s not hard to do that” I said “yes I can do this”. I didn’t realize when it became a part of me coz one day I had to reach for an appointment and was kind of rushing as it was rush hour too and changed lanes a few times as there were some slow drivers in front me :) and didn’t realize when and how I passed so many trucks on my way without that thought even occurring to me. It was while coming back when I noticed myself trying to pass a truck I looked back and said to myself, “did I just do that”?

It was the Power of Visualization and the kind of language I spoke to myself that made all the difference………………….
Nothing is out there, its all in our mind and how and what we speak to ourselves………………..