Circle of life?
A phone call, a forwarded email and a piece by Nita had me thinking today morning. Are we as a society really heading back to where our ancestors came from. A leisurely pace of life. A physically demanding lifestyle like ploughing fields, drawing water from a well and well! walking everywhere to get things done.
My friend was extolling the virtues of brown rice over white. Is that not what our grandparents and to an extent our parents grew up on? In the process of modernization we have managed to strip rice of its natural goodness and then add the nutrients back through chemical means and make it fortified white rice. So indeed have we managed inject cows with hormones to give more milk and now search for ‘organic’ milk so we are not overdosing ourselves on hormones. We spray pesticides to keep the crops healthy and end up paying double for pesticide free produce.
Most of Europe I believe has short work weeks to let families enjoy their time together. To reinforce that what is important in the long run is personal quality of life. Over the course of many many years we seem to have been a generation lost and now there seems to be a marked movement that is rediscovering the glory of life past. I am not sure how much of it we will see in our lifetimes but it intrigues me that the circle of life is complete.
We strike again…I always think the same…we had a great system…we then aped everything western since its considered modern and when the west is impressed with the past …we now appreciate it too…we always had it within us…but never respected it enough… I see Poweryoga is such a rage now…..and everybody at the gym talks about it….as if its recently discovered….just beacuse its fancied in the west now…I dont have anything against the west but these are my ruminations…
What I do see is the movement of West taking up the ways of the East , milking the good things we grew up on and the East vice versa, milking most of the bad things. from the West…definitely life circles, from good to bad and bad to good, I would like to be stuck when it’s good, but never occurs, times circles for each life.
rupa, i was nodding my head on that comment on power yoga, one that was practised every dawn in most households, way in the past, is limited to gyms back home…where as in the west people are practising it like a newly found ritual..
In India unfortunately we in another phase of the cycle…just taking to junk foods and the like. And in India work days are getting longer
One needs to strike a balance, because finally it takes a toll on our health
India is still on the course of its “westernisation”…junk food, gymming as a fashion and not really for health as I saw in many cases, lots more like that… Guess we should atleast learn from the mistakes that have been made back in the west and learn not to repeat the same.
Nita, it does not take a toll just on our health, but on our family also!
Hi your comment is amazing.
I will definitely read your diary..
bye
Haha very true.
Holds good for fashion as well, with the short kurtas back in fashion. :–)
We dont have short work weeks, but we atleast have wfh, or telecommuting options.
@Rupa/UL: Yup! Yoga is back so is a host of things that was a part of lifestyle back then.
@Nita/Apar: I really hope it does!
@SK: I love the kurtis though so glad about that fashion circle
[...] ties in with an earlier discussion here on this blog about going back to Nature and completing this Circle of Life. Here are some things each of us can adopt in our everyday lives to be part of this movement. To [...]
[...] ties in with an earlier discussion here on this blog about going back to Nature and completing this Circle of Life. Here are some things each of us can adopt in our everyday lives to be part of this movement. To [...]