When the Going gets tough, the Basics get Going

0
478

 Amrit Pradhan talks about coping with pressure in one’s life.

As we ‘teenagers’ climb up on the age scale, the shift to adulthood is a kaleidoscope of taking full credit of our ‘own’ actions to the aim of making ourselves capable of a sustainable living in future. This may not resound with some of my fellow teenagers due to the run-of-the-mill fragrance of the topic. But the underlying natural forces of a next-gen adult still cover the same basics that signifies the youth bulge idealism of standing on our ‘own legs’. Taking day-to-day decisions based on our own cognizance, sorting our own preferences which sets everything in-place for the long term and maybe save enough from ‘pocket money’ to cater to our binges or in some circumstances, saving for catering our future expectations.

The transformation isn’t easy as it sounds on the script. The basics are the rudimentary but the implementation of it is varied and unique across every individual. More so ever in India, where the diversity of culture you are brought up in is different for each and every individual. This scale of diversity can be gauged by the Anthropological Survey of India’s estimation of 4635 no. of communities[1]. So the eating habits, dressing habits, spending habits et al. are very different.  But again when you scale down the expectations and desires across class-and-file of youth bulge the parameters can be streamlined to the same basics.

In a cricketers’ life, highs and lows are part-and-parcel of his/her career. When everything seems to click on and off the field, few questions are raised about. But when the stars break the pattern, a glut of questions start to surface about. The individual himself/ herself starts to fight with his/her oneself pondering over changing his technique, back-lift, stance, approach towards the game, superstitions et al.  These all are justified, this is when you require substantial support from family, friends and coaches. Moreover, if you have gone through the lull before, you would have already built a tad bit of immunity to bounce back from the downs. You would stick by the basics and work on enhancing them more. This is exactly what has happened with the Kohli’s, Root’s and Ashwin’s of the present era.

This ‘basics principle’ permeates through in every individual’s career in form of the way he/she eats, sleeps and read’s throughout his/her whole life cycle. Mind you referring to reading not only means your traditional books, novels etc. but also the day-to-day life situation which help you in taking decisions. All the grim and pressure are a part of one’s life cycle, as we grow older the scales also go up higher. The world is competitive enough and if you don’t shape up, you’re shipped out. It is not a Pareto Efficient[2]world, it is rather a square peg in a round hole every time you step-put and experience LIFE. Don’t they say, “Life begins out of your comfort zone”.

It is widely seen that the youth create a new set of ideals when they grow older, but these change in ideals are nothing but new ways to face-off the churn. Actively, what I am referring to is the neo-socialist attitude of the youth to indulge in ‘de-merit goods’ such as drinking, smoking and using drugs.[3] This is where we all need to stick to the basics and try to smile at every situation we face-up with (I must admit it is easier to write about it rather than doing it in the circumstances).  It will at least give us a base to deal with similar situations in future better. Remember drinking, smoking and rave partying (not partying or celebrations) are ingredients of shortcuts.

We the youth will create a bigger hole by hiding ourselves behind these artificial route to hiving of pressure. It is easier said than done, albeit this is a world with no free-lunches’. It is cut-throat, competitive and demanding. Do not hide behind the screen, take a leaf-out of now world’s highest no. gilt-edged Olympian Michael Phelps (23 nos. of Gold Medals across five Olympics, he didn’t win a single-one n his first appearance in Sydney Olympics,2000). Before Rio 2016, he was out from the sport for two-years of competitive sport due to his drug problems. But he came back fighting. Time to fight back Comrades’!

References:

[1] Ministry of Culture – Govt. of India, ‘A note on the Series, People of India’ (Anthropological Survey of India,  31 March, 1992) http://www.ansi.gov.in/people_india.htm accessed 15 August 2016.

[2] An economic term relating to maintaining the principle of equality while allocating resources. Named after Italian Economist Vilfredo Pareto.

[3] De-merit Goods – An economic jargon referring to a good or a service obtained/consumed by a consumer which degrades or has related reneging effect on the consumer.

Leave a Reply