Don’t Feed the Animal
I don’t know why, but recently I’ve been noticing a lot of cravings within me. Whether it’s craving oily and spicy food or binge watching NETFLIX, I am on craving spree of sorts. Ok, but what has this got to do with feeding animals?
Well, if you ask, I am not quite referring to cute little puppies in American homes or fierce lions in the African jungle. I am actually referring to the animal inside me. Well, inside all of us. At least, that’s how I see it. There’s an age old Indian proverb about how a human is half animal and half god. I never really paid any significance to this idea, largely because I thought that I had outgrown the dual nature of life. The idea that the yin and yang of life are one in the same, and not quite different.
But, lately I am somehow gravitating towards the idea that this proverb entails. If you actually start compartmentalizing what you do on a daily basis, you can actually observe that almost all the tasks you perform fall into one of two buckets. Tasks like sleeping, eating, streaming, and intimacy fall into one bucket. While intellectual tasks like writing code or philosophy fall into another bucket.
Although the former set of tasks actually seem to be giving more instant gratification, the satiation is not a sustained one. You eat your favorite food, and then 3 hrs later you crave something else. You stream a rom-com, then you crave an action thriller. It’s almost as if there’s no end to this gratification. Maybe that’s how modern capitalism and consumerism thrive in America? Maybe that’s why the rest of us worry about a blue tick in Twitter while people like Musk are busy revamping its architecture.
But, I digress. In any case, we as a social animal don’t have any restraint when it comes to engaging the animal side of us. And it gets the best of us. No one is immune to it. Most of us don’t realize the harmful effects for it: be it the wellness aspect of it or the economical aspect of it due to the hours that we couldn’t produce. And some of us who do restrain the animal side, let it loose occasionally, which compensates for the lost damage.
Maybe it’s just me, but I am in a dilemma. On one hand, we do have to do things that protect our body and wellness to keep a physical presence in the world. Yet, to survive in this modern economy, it seems as though we have to engage the intellectual side or divine side (if you believe in that) more often. But, where do we strike that balance? If you have thoughts and ideas, comment below and we can chat :)):
