One thing that has struck me after living in India for 15 years straight is the importance and need for convenience in developed countries like USA, Europe Japan, etc. As anyone who has spent time in India will tell you, convenience is WAY down on the priority list, and is not really regarded as important in any way by most Indians ( except the uber rich).. The thing is. even though we may have a 5 hour delay on a train ride, or sit for half an hour to be served in a restaurant, or drive in disorganised traffic chaos for hours on end, somehow people don't seem to mind that much in India.
I was in the UK last month for the first time in 5 years, and it was quite interesting standing on the train platform looking at the train timings. It was never more than a few minutes for your train to arrive, and there was convenience plastered everywhere! Incredible coffee, any kind of food you could want to eat, comfortable and clean indoor waiting areas. Everything was running like clockwork, and everyone was passing through without any dramas or much fuss at all. And yet, as convenient as it all was, people looked not so happy, and i saw very few smiles whilst waiting for my train. In fact its fair to say that over that 10 day trip, most people seemed to be Very stressed out, and the overall feeling on the street was not good.
What is really interesting to see is what happens when that convenient world goes even a bit wrong! I mean life is life, and things are never perfect all of the time! And what is so interesting is to witness how upset people in the modern world get about being inconvenienced. Even the slightest delay or change in peoples patterns and expectations of how their day is supposed to flow, brings up a lot of anger and frustration in many people. They huff, and they puff, and complain.. " Im going to be delayed by 30 minutes! That is totally unacceptable!!"..
SO it seems that in the world of convenience people are not content when things go even a little bit wrong, AND even if things are going perfectly well! What is going on? Well to put it simply, people get used to whatever world they happen to be in, and when everything is set up to be perfectly convenient we end up switching off! Yes, we fall asleep, wide-a-sleep! Why? Because everything becomes predictable, planned, accounted for, and we will only accept what we expect to happen, and worse still we expect someone else to make it right for us. We become enslaved by giving our power, time, freedom away to a life of perfection and convenience.
Convenience is not a natural state, and its when I look at countries like India that i REALLY realise how precious the other way of living is! That other way is another way of life, and one that I think we should hold on to. You see, when you are delayed for an hour on a train platform and are not upset about it, and you live in the moment without an expectation of how every moment is supposed to look.. then the magic starts to happen! If you are OPEN, and awake you may end up sitting next to someone and having a nice conversation, or you may have time to sit and meditate for a bit to wind down and recharge for the day ahead, or indeed ANYTHING at all!
So, my ironic message to you today is,, try welcoming some in-convenience in your lives! It can make those times when things are going well be so much more pleasant. Sometimes we need to lose things in order to appreciate what we have, and inconvenience is a great opportunity to re-discover our appreciation of convene-ice. From my experience in life,
It is the people who have been most inconvenienced in life that wear the biggest smiles on a sunny day!
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