Connected or disconnected

Somewhere things have got disconnected. Every moment, every minute, every day, every year I am getting more disconnected. Though I am not sure from where I am getting detached but the feeling of getting away from something deepens every time. Things that were close by has moved away or is it that I have moved away – can’t figure what moved but there lies a vast vacuum. Today I find myself close to my career and personal goals but far from where my heart wanted to be. The dreams of childhood remained unrealized as if they were some figment of imagination. Growing up, every small dream was beaten to shape by the earthy realities and circumstances. Now I don’t dream, I try to move on with life as a unmanned boat in a river.

Not that my dreams were shattered, not that I am unhappy and not doing great, but as it happens every success brings with it some sense of discontent and leaves space to want more. More one gets the more is needed; it’s not just a fluke that ‘Yeh Dil Maange More’ is such a hit amongst young masses. In a fight to move forward, the destination has become important, the means or “how” becomes impertinent. Sometimes we even forget from where we origin.

In a society where, couple of decades back, people was strongly culturally bounded, the human touch is dissipating every instant and the electronic way is coming in. Everything is replaced to a faster but shorter, easier but costlier, sweet but erasable mean. To start with phone calls had replaced letters, then emails replaced the phone calls, and now emails are getting replaced by Short Messages. In the whole process we save more time, spend more money and write/speak less. And the last aspect is most concerning. The individual in us is growing bigger and the social self is made to non-existent. Wonder if the social world was so complex ever before or whether people got time to think about all these. Kids these days play with Xbox and whatever high tech games, gone are the days when they spent their days and weekends with the grannies!!

But on the contrary this change cannot be ignored and this is the obvious. This is what the whole world is crazy about. This is what the whole world is working on, making money from and investing money in. This are the things that makes the today’s world a better place to live in compared to the days spent by our fathers. It’s not that the modernization that’s making people’s mind narrower, it cannot be that with options in hand people only opt for things that help each individual and not for everyone. May be God’s greatest creation is losing the edge as they created and are now behaving like their greatest creation – machines!!

When I look back, I lost more than I gained perhaps I gained in social and financial status but some where down the line I see I got disconnected from my childhood, then from my school days, then college days, then bachelor days... married life... but as it turn out every next phase was faced with more apprehension and every treaded path became even more precious. Only after moving on to the next phase I realized what I missed in the passing phase. As years passed by I not only got older but also moved closer to the ultimate. And now as every step I take towards eternity, I try to connect the pieces that fell apart when I was driving on the fast lane to beat my own shadow. Sometime I feel I was trying to win a single player game but still lost. To keep pace and be in the race, today I am stranded alone. I sit and try to recall the small things which I used to love, my childhood friends are lost, they lost the race long before.

So where did I go wrong or did I?