“When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?” is the brilliant closing line of the famous song, Vienna by Billy Joel. If you haven’t heard, this song questions our fears, the fomo, trying to race ahead of the unknown whilst losing a piece of ourselves, concluding the song with a jarring reminder that everything we wantis already there and it waits for us. Listening to this song the other day made me ponder over how a song that came in the late 70s stood true then and now too.
Which is why I want to break it toyou about the race that you are trying to win no longer exists!
Let me painta picture of your regular day- you wake up after snoozing your alarm for six times, rushing through your morning routine, scarfing down your breakfast (ormaybe skipping it) because you want to beat the morning rush hours, meeting your work requirements while dreaming of the restful sleep you want to get inthe night, scrolling through your phone while planning for a relaxing vacation,attending meetings while contemplating your future plans, stuck in the evening rush hours agitated as it is pushing back your rest hours, only to spend that time being wide awake and regret about the time slipped away. And moments before you fall asleep there are those whispers in your head, gnawing and asking if this hustle is all worth waking up tomorrow.
Today, I want to give voice to those hushed words that you do not dare to think about the next morning.
We live inthe time where the hustle is worshipped. Running on caffeine and four hours ofsleep is glorified. Having no social plans for the weekend is sometimes braggedabout. In this fast-paced world, we set personalized goals that define successfor us. And when we achieve that, we create another goal and exert ourselves to strive for it. But when are you going to sit down and enjoy the fruits that you bore with your blood, sweat and tears? When are we going to understand that weare only competing with ourselves? That it is us who keep pushing the finishline.
Not knowingwhere to draw the finish line, exerting ourselves without understanding our threshold of tolerance can lead to exhaustion and ultimately burning out. Thisburnout gradually manifests into psychosomatic symptoms like restlessness,muscle soreness, headrush, headaches, fatigue, and many more. Moreover, as aresponse to stress, our adrenal gland releases a hormone called ‘cortisol.’While this is traditionally released as a choice to either ‘fight’ or ‘flight’in reasonable stressful situations, our body has been overridden to differentiate these situations. Instead, it is released at hearing a mere mail notification, or at the thought of just waking up the next day to repeat the entirehustle cycle.
So, before you set your goals to reach the finish line, you must set the bar of your threshold of tolerance. Not everybody can push themselves until they squeeze the last drop of their motivation juices. Some people want to rest up and re-energize after a small task. And when we bend our perceptions, the invisiblerace eventually ceases to exist.
Let us begin to reconsider our view of seeing it as a race and rethink our approach. Instead of trying to race through life, let us stop in our tracks and realize that everything that we want has already been here, that it is going to wait for useven if we slowly crawl towards it. Even if you take multiple breaks, even ifyou give up midway and pick it up much later. Even if you do it one breath at a time.
