We tell our kids to work hard. When they get a bit lazy, we see it as a red flag and push them to work harder. We try to tempt them with their dreams and goals to keep them motivated. Barring a few kids, most have enough motivation to work hard and achieve what they want. They don’t mind giving up many pleasures for that. All of us also left so many temptations when we prepared for civil services. Spending time with friends can cause a lot of stress at the end of the day. Watching movies will make us feel guilty. A few days of laziness will make us feel guilty. We’ve all been through those phases.

Some of us choose to stay in our comfort zones and prefer socialisation, parties, fun, and entertainment, so we can’t grow beyond them. This is very well depicted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his flow chart as follows:

When the challenge is much lower than our capacity, we get bored; when the challenge is higher than we can handle, we grow anxious. Some of us stay in our comfort zone and choose an easy option, such as joining our family businesses or graduating with little effort, and then take a routine job that isn’t very challenging. Most of these people soon face boredom because they don’t face enough challenges commensurate with their capacity. People can’t bear boredom for long, which is why they look for escapes. They attend the same meaningless social functions and get-togethers, dance parties, reasons to have liquor, again and again. Some take on challenges bigger than they can handle and grow anxious. We see many people try their luck in Bollywood acting when they aren’t good actors. They grow anxious and disappear soon. We also see many students try their luck with civil services preparation, slowly grow anxious, and give up after one or two attempts.

This part of the journey is still easier. We have the known targets in front of us. We know what is required to clear the examination. We know what it takes to set up a business. We just have to overcome our instincts, and with a few years of hard work, we can generally make our mark. However, after all these initial achievements, all these achievers face a mid-life crisis. They listened to success stories that looked quite tempting. They did the hard work, overcame temptations, and succeeded. After that, the first few years feel very fulfilling. We have new experiences, take on new workplace challenges, and try to learn a lot. We keep growing in terms of understanding and capacity. But growth has limits within that framework, and we soon outgrow it.

We experience the midlife crisis. At this stage, a few try to find new challenges within society’s framework. Some join politics, some try to expand their businesses, some diversify, some take up new hobbies, some change companies, and some move abroad. They feel they will escape boredom and that the new place will offer new challenges. Probably, they close their eyes towards the limitations of all the frames. They fail to understand that if they got bored by Civil Services, which they qualified for after so much hard work, they will get bored with politics as well. They fail to understand that the new business will also have its own limitations.

A few realise the limits of all frames and therefore try to understand life’s reality. They explore the psychology behind relationships; the meaning and limits of motivational structures; the meaning of pleasure; the reality of our belief systems; and the truth behind the meaning of life our society and parents have taught us. It’s very unsettling because for the last 40-50 years we have lived within that framework, with all those belief systems and meanings. That’s why those beliefs and meanings are so deeply integrated into our lives. They are deeply rooted in our unconscious mind, so when we challenge them, we have a very strong reaction within us.

Another major challenge in this journey is that hardly anyone can guide us. We look to books written by mystics, but they often don’t seek to address the questions directly. Or, more precisely, we are so keen to hold on to our beliefs and meanings, and yet find out reality, that we don’t listen to what these books actually tell us. We move from pillar to post and, in the process, encounter some Baba or Guru who wants to make money or gain popularity, and we fall into the trap. The biggest challenge of this journey is being our own light, while carrying our own beliefs and meanings. But at the core, we are not different from nature, and that’s why nature leads us to many people and experiences that break us free of those stories, meanings, and beliefs. Until we break each story, meaning, and belief, we keep encountering these experiences.

After each such experience, we feel that we have wasted so much time in that process, and our spiritual journey has been very slow. But if we recall the story of Narad Muni, when he develops an ego of being a big devotee of Narayan, and Narayan sends him to get a glass of water, and Narad falls in love with the girl who brings water, marries her, has kids, and then has a lot of mental stress and again recalls Narayan and goes back. Narayan asks him for water. The story also suggests that time is an illusion. However, Narad will not realise that illusion of time unless he goes back and meets Narayan. We too feel quite disturbed when we realise we have wasted a lot of time on the stories, beliefs, and meanings our minds have made since childhood. However, unless we leave these and experience consciousness in its purest form, we will not realise that time is also relative. The concept of time is also restricted to this three-dimensional world.