Classical
conditioning is a practice which is conditioned in our thought process-
sometimes subtly, but mostly with a brazen candour. Training is a chip which is
embedded within our veins each time before we start on a new journey. It all
starts off with a parent holding your hand to teach you how to walk, how to
speak, what to eat, how to eat, how much to eat, what not to eat, where to eat,
whom to eat with and all the other related eating activities apart from other
not so important things.
Formal
education is the apostle to prepare us for the bout of adorning our careers. To
prove a clear point that what has been told to you all these years through
education is futile and has no application in the real world, you are inducted
and trained again for basic skill sets at workplace. A school of thought
believes that these training modules are created to kill your swashbuckling
instincts and just orient you to align with the processes. So you may garb your
actions in the cloak of originality, but you are doing nothing more than just
contributing to the processes.
Another school
of thought agrees to disagree with this perspective. They claim that we have an
innate penchant for comfort zones and these training modules are meant to
ensure a smooth transition from your previous comfort zone and in the process
build a new one where you have to ultimately reside for some part of the near
future. Neat explanation indeed.
But where this
training process goes horribly wrong is making us overtly dependent on it, so
much that whenever we are looking at a transition facing us in our lives, we
are looking at external sources to prepare for it. This is equally applicable
in professional and personal lives which explains the booming business of books
on interview preparations, self-improvement books and seminars, books on being
a good parent, a good husband/wife and of course the perennial business of
shrinks. It’s no more the stress months of annual appraisal, kids’ exam months
which are high business generating leads for shrinks. They have been able to
come up with a strategic business calendar to emphasize on stress points for
each month of the year. After all, stress is round the corner, all you need to
do is seek for it.
So after
living a life of being conditioned for change, when an individual looks forward
to the change of retirement, inevitably he/she ends up leaving a few loose ends
in preparing for it. Some claim to have worked on the plan for years, others
reassure themselves that they are mentally convinced and have a fall-back
arrangement to battle the change. Some claim to have found an escape route to
procrastinate answering the question, but the stark reality is they are just
not prepared for it.
’40 tak note
chaapo aur fir retirement’ is a line used in one of the recent movies which
resonates the mantra of a modern day professional. The line of thought is
clear: earn as much as possible till a certain age and then dedicate your life
reaping the dividends of your hard work and spending time to nurture refined
taste in your hobby. The sad part is this plan is no better than Government’s
Five Year Plans. You know the problem, you have a plan to confront the macro
challenges, but there is no attention paid to detailing. The variable of your
personality changing is completely neglected.
The practical
problems start off with shifting base to a new city, which in most cases is the
native state where you belong. After absorbing the flavour of the culture of a
specific region of this country, settling down in some other part is a daunting
task. We proud ourselves in Unity in Diversity, but when the fundamental brick
refuses to align itself, be rest assure the mansion is not going to be a sturdy
one. The differences arise from ease of borrowing sugar to borrowing domestic
help, from aligning evening walks to aligning frequency of thoughts, from
inviting neighbours for tea to not inviting unnecessary attention of the ones
not invited for tea in the first batch. The count is endless.
Men probably
find it more difficult to adjust to this change as now their boisterous
flamboyance is compromised. They usually are not as well connected to the
realities of their own nest and always had a cave to run off to in the form of
the outer world. Working women, because of the weight of expectations from the
beginning, master the art of balancing both worlds. A small example can be the
discomfort men face when left to manage the domestic help in the absence of the
lady of the house. So you would find a man whose line in the CV boasted in
block letters: Exquisite leadership
skills with expertise in resource and people management, but now clearly
struggling to brief the maid properly to cover each corner of the house while
wiping the floor.
Neither will
they be too vocal about the discomfort, nor will they immediately find an
acknowledgement to accept this reality. Their response to this change would be
to find some avenue to keep themselves busy by finding a task. Thus, you would
find the car being cleaned, switchboards being examined, ration being ordered
and delivered, plumber being beckoned, bank visits, municipality office visits,
electricity office visits, society secretary office visits, propensity for
tea/coffee all increase in frequency. After all a person who had henchmen
throughout his life ready to follow orders just at the stroke of a finger, now
find themselves to be all alone like a king dethroned and sent on an exile.
It is all a
matter of acknowledging and appreciating the change within you. We are forced
to recognize how our body changes with time and becomes susceptible to external
forces. Somehow we refuse to acknowledge and notice the same when it comes to
our mind. Losing span of control at work doesn’t mean you have to build one at
home. The idea should be to let your mind go on a vacation to a destination
which it has loved forever. It is important to figure out what makes you happy
early in your life, so that if time was an excuse for not visiting that
junction during working days, maybe now you can let your mind pack its bags
from the routine and take off to the happy zone. You have spent enough years of
your life becoming an example for others, maybe a few can be dedicated to
create one for yourself.
