Boredom is omnipresent and so is monotony. The availability of innumerable options do not alleviate monotony or bring down the gestation of boredom. In fact, it is starting to look like the multiplicity of choices and monotony are directly proportional. The more the choices, the easier you get bogged down by monotony. In my opinion, being spoilt for choice is no fun.
True to the subject, I have used four different sentences to convey the same meaning. But am still not satisfied of making my point effectively. This is exactly today's world.
For everything you need, be it a product or a service, you bump into a motley of choices. Like a child entering a room full of playthings, you experience a glee. GLEE. But that's only the initial reaction. Once you start pondering over the choices, the confusion you encounter is overwhelming and you are full of......the title of this post !
We had a Voltas refrigerator, which was bought in 1989! It was working perfectly well, except for the noise the compressor would make during the on-off-on moments spurred by the thermostat. Not to mention the rust-dust it was shedding everyday....
Being a little over-conscious about energy conservation and keen about bringing a shiny thingy home, I convinced Ammi that it was time to replace this antique refrigerator with a new one. When I started looking which one to buy, what happened to me was exactly what I explained in the previous paragraph!
In today's world of new-for-old exchange offers, only the advertiesments are attractive. The exchange price was a whopping Rs.500 for my old fridge and the new one costed a mere Rs.10000! Giving away a perfectly working appliance for Rs.500, just for the excitement of bringing a new one, which you dont know if it will work as well as your old one and which you dont know if it will save energy? Rs.500? Oh.... How would I convince Appa, who's never enthusiastic about discarding anything old and has a remote possibility of working....? Fortunately, he found someone in his sub-staff who could do with a used fridge. Suddenly, my old fridge was ready to go (free of cost, of course) and I was yet to find a new one.
Pressed by the urgent need to find a replacement and faced with the BOREDOM & CONFUSION borught in by so many models, about 40, which were close to my specs and I shortlisted 4 for Ammi to choose from. I wanted to buy an Indian brand, but ended up buying a Korean brand. The only reason being the float-glass shelves instead of the wire shelves and Ammi-my boss, preferred glass shelves so that she dont have to worry about accidentally placing her tiny containers between the gaps and spilling the contents.
The new fridge is sure a shiny thing, silent-well, almost, energy-saving - 5 star rating, and am still looking for my old electricity bills to compare with. One other thing am not sure about is, if Ammi has stopped missing our old refridgerator.
I was plainly happy that the task of choosing a new fridge, was finally over. This was in January 2009. The same story was about to repeat itself in May 2009, when my 8 year old TV flunked. Once bitten, I quickly settled for the cheapest available model, not wanting to succumb to boredom, again so easily, by getting tempted by the multiplicity of choices. Looks like it will be a constant and untiring effort to avoid boredom....what with a 12 year old washing machine. Whew...!
True to the subject, I have used four different sentences to convey the same meaning. But am still not satisfied of making my point effectively. This is exactly today's world.
For everything you need, be it a product or a service, you bump into a motley of choices. Like a child entering a room full of playthings, you experience a glee. GLEE. But that's only the initial reaction. Once you start pondering over the choices, the confusion you encounter is overwhelming and you are full of......the title of this post !
We had a Voltas refrigerator, which was bought in 1989! It was working perfectly well, except for the noise the compressor would make during the on-off-on moments spurred by the thermostat. Not to mention the rust-dust it was shedding everyday....
Being a little over-conscious about energy conservation and keen about bringing a shiny thingy home, I convinced Ammi that it was time to replace this antique refrigerator with a new one. When I started looking which one to buy, what happened to me was exactly what I explained in the previous paragraph!
In today's world of new-for-old exchange offers, only the advertiesments are attractive. The exchange price was a whopping Rs.500 for my old fridge and the new one costed a mere Rs.10000! Giving away a perfectly working appliance for Rs.500, just for the excitement of bringing a new one, which you dont know if it will work as well as your old one and which you dont know if it will save energy? Rs.500? Oh.... How would I convince Appa, who's never enthusiastic about discarding anything old and has a remote possibility of working....? Fortunately, he found someone in his sub-staff who could do with a used fridge. Suddenly, my old fridge was ready to go (free of cost, of course) and I was yet to find a new one.
Pressed by the urgent need to find a replacement and faced with the BOREDOM & CONFUSION borught in by so many models, about 40, which were close to my specs and I shortlisted 4 for Ammi to choose from. I wanted to buy an Indian brand, but ended up buying a Korean brand. The only reason being the float-glass shelves instead of the wire shelves and Ammi-my boss, preferred glass shelves so that she dont have to worry about accidentally placing her tiny containers between the gaps and spilling the contents.
The new fridge is sure a shiny thing, silent-well, almost, energy-saving - 5 star rating, and am still looking for my old electricity bills to compare with. One other thing am not sure about is, if Ammi has stopped missing our old refridgerator.
I was plainly happy that the task of choosing a new fridge, was finally over. This was in January 2009. The same story was about to repeat itself in May 2009, when my 8 year old TV flunked. Once bitten, I quickly settled for the cheapest available model, not wanting to succumb to boredom, again so easily, by getting tempted by the multiplicity of choices. Looks like it will be a constant and untiring effort to avoid boredom....what with a 12 year old washing machine. Whew...!
3 comments:
u r asolutely right subbu....solong we live in boundaries..i.e.in physical frame which has boundaries and in thos world which has boundaries...whatsoever my be thw task either job or recreation..we r in bounded work...so to get away from boredom one needs to go to unboundedness..i.e experience the glimpses of unboundedness..i.e go beyond the physical frame by way of meditation or relaxation tecnic what our Seers found long long long ago.
Leading a life without high expectations will definitely alleviate boredom and discontent. But, each of our desires has so many layers and we want all those layers to be satisfied for each desire, which becomes the starting point for all our troubles.
Since there are so many choices for each of those layers, we find ourselves in a corner, unable to decide what suits our expectations or revising our expectations according to better choices available , leading to frustration, discontent and finally boredom.
Remember the good old days, when we had Doordarshan as the only TV channel. The happiness, enjoyment and satisfaction we got, when we waited restlessly for our favourite programs - all of them weekly, except news - and at last watched it. We can't even imagine to get that satisfaction, with the hundreds of channels available now beaming thousands of programmes. Today, more time is spent only on surfing the channels than watching the programmes.
That's why the proverb "Too much of anything is good for nothing".
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