Out of 24 hours a day, we are spending 8 hours in sleeping.  Minimum 9 hours for office.  1-2 hours for travelling.  1 hour for personal work. After which we get 4-5 hours for family.

Every Individual has different priorities in life . According to our priorities we adjust some time between all these activities. And this is art of work life balance.

What is my idea of balancing ?

My work expect me to spend 8 hours in office and my passion toward work keep me busy for office work for more than 8 hours a day.

We are working couple.  Me and My wife, both are working in software industry.   My daughter is going to school for more than 5 hrs .  I have to give sufficient time to my family. We have facility of Flexi work hours. I use this to give appropriate time for my family.  I adjust my schedule to match maximum time available for family and friends.   My Daughter goes school at 8 AM. I also get ready by this time and leave for office. My wife also start around same time.  Reaching early to office helps me to finish my work earlier and then I can leave office earlier.  By the time I reach home,  both my wife are daughter are at home .  This way I manage to give additional time for my family and myself.

I don’t gain anything, if I start late from home.  Morning time can’t be used much for other activities. Also , if I reach late in office, I will leave office late . And when I reach home , my daughter will go to bed and I won’t be able to spend time with her.

I feel it is very important to give sufficient time to kid. It becomes more important, when both Parents are working and there is no elder member available in family.  Maid /Care taker can just keep the kids but they can’t give  very important lessons which kids need at this stage.  We should not expect maid/care take to give Love, Manners, Family values to Kids.  These lessons are not available in any school but only available in institution called Family.  First school for Kid for everything, is Family. And if we leave kids more time with maid/care taker, kids will learn same values and manners.

Some time back,  One of my friend offered me  Carpooling for office commuting on daily basis.  But then found that my colleague can start for office not earlier than 10 AM.  If I choose to go along with him, In morning  I will be spending 2 Hrs morning at home without much of benefits, and then coming late home by 2 hrs. So technically I’m wasting 2 hrs from my family time. Or if I leave early for family, then I’m compromising my work ethics.  In return, what I’m saving is some money from fuel , and some  time for friends.

But I realized, 2 more hours for family is more valuable than cost of fuel.

We may find different friends  and  different work at different stages of life. But family remains same.  For short gains at work or friend circle, sometimes we ignore our family/ kids.  Unless kids are grown beyond teen,  we are their work and friend circle.  They need sufficient time from us . Whenever, I have to give extra time for office work, I make sure that I give some additional time for family or give my kid some more happiness.

This is Basis of my work life balance. In all situations, I use this basic principle and keep my work life in proper balance.

This is not related to the casteism which Aamir Khan talked in his show last week. This is something, which I have been noticing since long time but recent incident made me facing this dirty face of Modern Casteism.

Recently, I happened to visit a Police station near my home.  Some evilhead person was pelting stone at basement of our building since last few nights. Building watchman was not able to find who is doing it.  One night it broke Rare window glass of my neighbor’s new Car. We decided to file a complaint in nearby police station to have a stop on stone pelting . It was 10:30 PM , I went to police station along with my neighbors.   As it was late evening, we thought there will be less crowd. But there were more than 50 people around the officers in police station.  They all were talking in Telugu ( local language in AP ) and I was not able to make out why so many people are there.  Any ways, we have been asked to give a complaint in writing  and my neighbor got busy in writing the letter. Meantime, I was trying to understand the environment in the police station.

There were two Sofa and Chair kept in front of Officer In-Charge’s Room for visitors.  There were few guys sitting on those and few were standing near to those. All those were appearing some businessmen.  Waiting for their leaders  who were in meeting with Officer.

Next to them, a lady was sitting on floor with two kids and her husband. It was easy to understand from their look that they are very poor. Husband’s shirt were ripped off so appearing like he was beaten by someone and came to file complain. Kids were very sleepy and were finding difficult to sleep on the cold bare floor.  Few minutes later, a police man came and asked businessmen to go out and wait.  Now chairs are empty so poor kids sit on the chair …but Policeman asked them to not sit on chair .

Then policeman came to us, and when he understood reason of us being there, he asked us to wait on those chairs .

I got a place to sit …. But I was not feeling good sitting there and thinking, why those kids ( or the family ) were not allowed to sit on those chairs ?

It is just because they  were poor ? yes.. this was the only reason.  This is very common behavior across the world  and This is the Modern Casteism; Poor , Middle Class, Rich, Super Rich.  Poor are being considered as untouchable.  They were asked to sit on floor. The family had small kids , they were waiting there since long time . On all grounds, they were supposed to get the chair before us.

We waited there for more than an hour.. all this time, the kids were trying to sleep on floor.  There was so much of delay and it was late night.. the family left the place as no one was willing to understand their pain . They came to Police station in search of Justice  and they had to leave without meeting officer.

This is very ugly face of modern casteism.  Poor people in the society is being denied for their basic rights.

So called “Open Minded” /”Broad Minded” /”Progressive”/”Modern” people of the society are raising their voice against Casteism. But they are ignoring the Modern Casteism and sometimes even they are promoting it.

I know one thing for sure .. Neither of these casteism are good for society and we must get rid of both. I don’t know .. and I’m still thinking .. which Casteism has to be attacked on priority.

A few days back, I was talking to one of my friend.  She was travelling  on vacation with her parents, leaving her son at home. She was undergoing emotional stress leaving her son for 3 weeks.

But she was shying to express this emotions .   I was wondering, why she was shying to express or talk the emotions she has for her own kid ? Moreover , she said that she feel weird when someone else express such emotions . This was surprising to me , as this lady is very mature and expressive .

Why we shy to express any of our feelings or behavior ?  I think , It is mostly because of two reasons . one, we consider it as a bad thing.   Second , we think that it is a weakness and we want to be strong.

Obviously, emotions for own kid can’t be considered as bad. So she must be having second reason for not expressing it. She think herself very strong and consider emotions as weakness.

Are emotions  sign of any weakness ?

No ….expressing emotions is very courageous . Emotions are true feelings of heart. Only strong people can show their emotions to others.  Hiding emotions is as good as wearing mask to hide our true face.

To gain success in any area of life, we need dedication . Dedication is nothing but a form of emotion.  Here emotions are focused to achieve some goals.  Not having these emotion, it is difficult to stay focused and achieve goals.

We mostly feel proud on our professional emotions, but when it comes to personal emotions, we consider it as weakness. This is result of very high Ego. We think ourselves a self-made person and don’t want to have any dependency. But when we have some emotions for other person, it brings some dependency and this hurts our ego.  In this ego, we forget contribution of others in our life and want to stand alone.

When we don’t consider existence of others and keep doing for our own, it is same like wild animals ..in fact animals also have emotions.  Being a social animal, human behavior demands to accept existence of  other people in life . Emotions is the only bonding  and key element of any relationship.  So when we don’t shy in expressing relations, then why to shy expressing emotions ?

I’m very much introvert. When it comes about personal emotions, I don’t shy expressing my emotions .Sharing emotions with wrong people may create problem for us, as they can take advantage and use us. I share my personal emotions only with people whom I trust and who can understand them.

If we leave our ego aside then we realize .. then our life is nothing , but Emotions . Find your emotions and express 🙂

There is a very popular cake shop near my home. I love that cake very much, and many times I buy cake from there.  Once I went there , and there was not much rush in the shop. A couple of customers were there in shop and I was waiting for my turn.  In the meantime , some more  customers came in and shopkeeper went to attend them, ignoring my turn.

I was expecting shopkeeper to attend customers in queue. I felt very bad and immediately left the shop, and never turned back to that shop again.  What was it ? my it my self-respect or it was my ego ?

Few days back, I went to a party along with my brother. The party was hosted in honor of my brother and I had invitation as nearer and dearer to him . There the host was asking all their guests to have lunch. Even though , I was with my brother, host didn’t asked me anytime to have the lunch.  The host was knowing me, but ignoring me. I felt very insulting and wanted to leave the place immediately. But me leaving like that could hurt my brother as well.  So I just absorbed my insult and stayed  with my brother . I was not even feeling to take a sip of water there, I ate full lunch there.  Just because, I didn’t want to hurt my brother.  But yes, it did hurt  my self-respect/ego.

I believe in God , and used to bow my head when crossing some temple. When I go to temple, I show full respect to god, without asking anything for myslef. In 2004, when everything went out of control from my hand and anybody on earth, I prayed in many temples just like mad and wished for betterment.  Dont know, what God was willing for me, he didnt give what I was asking, but made the thing worse.  After that incident, I didnt stop believing in god .. but I stopped going in any temple .  I stopped bowing head in front of temples.   I started going to temples after few years , as my mother wanted me to go. But some  temples , I still dont step in , where I used to go very regulalrly earlier.  Offcourse,   I dont keep my self above the God . Then what was/is my behaviour  … ego or self-respect ?

I was following up with one of my friend for a party for some collective reasons. Initially, he agreed to give party and asked me to choose venue and date. When I fixed both, he kept on ignoring for some time. I felt like he was treating me like a bagger. I shouted on him very badly.  But understanding that he might be having some reasons for not giving treat and I do care for him,  I apologies for my shouting. After that,  I asked him for few more times for party and he gracefully denied for lack of time.   I never rated party higher than the relation, so I ignored it.

Now , same friend was talking to me about giving party to some other friend. Off course , I can understand, he might be having some reasons to give his friend party and other friend might be more deserving . There is no question of comparison and I didn’t want to compare. But was trying to understand, what message my friend is trying to give me ? he knows that I’m still waiting for that party from him, then why he is talking to me about giving party to other friend ? Whatever message he wanted to give,  … it did hurt my self-respect .  But since I do care relation more than ego, I will absorb this insult as well, just like I did for my brother.

And now the open question is .. Is it my self-respect or is it my ego ?

There is a very fine hairline difference between self-respect and ego.  And mostly ego gets mixed in Self-respect. Normally, I don’t expect respect from anyone and for anything. But internally, I’m very conscious about my self-respect. And extra  consciousness turns my self-respect in to ego.  So not able to answer myself. Is it my self-respect or is it my ego ?

I received a feedback that there is a decline in my maturity level in last few days.

Had it been some other person giving this feedback, I never would have accepted it.  I very conscious about my behavior. Even If I’m at a big loss, I don’t give up my maturity.

But this  feedback came from a very nice and matured person. So I have to trust this feedback and take it in positive sense to improve upon my mistakes. I definitely try to get back to my old level of maturity, if I can’t get to higher.  But in the meantime, I lost confidence of people because of this immaturity.   Now I must look at the reasons what caused this . It’s not about finding excuses but more of  introspection.

I found two reasons… one is frustration and illusion…

A few days back,  I faced a shocking revelation.  One of my ex-colleague was going through some tough time and I was helping her finding better job and her husband.  I tried helping her all the ways I can do for her.  Now I got to know, that there is not so tough condition for her and she is already having a good job.  This broke me very deep inside . I found myself in world of illusions , and not able to understand, whom to trust and whom not.  This was the incident I couldn’t share with anyone and I had no one to talk and take out my frustration.  There was only one friend whom I can talk about it , but I annoyed and hurt him as well with my stupid ways.

I am feeling very insecure because of all this illusions and frustration.  And made some more mistakes with this insecurity .  At this time, my maturity must have stopped me doing stupidity. But got in control of my illusion and kept on doing more stupid things.  .  I might have recovered much better, having some help. I just need to talk out from deep which I can’t talk with anyone. Thoughts are boiling and most of them are junk, but need to speak up and get them away from my mind.

Unless it is shared , people don’t understand our state of mind and they expect same old behavior and maturity. The feedback gave me a chance to rethink about it Now, I only have to control my frustration and come out of illusion.  There will be internal fight with illusion and frustration. At the same time,  I need to be more careful that I should not hurt anyone anymore.

I have been recovered from worst situations and I am sure, I will recover soon from here as well. Only worry is , I should not lose more things which I don’t want to lose.

The other reason…desire and eagerness,

I have some desire,  and which is one of my deep focus for now.  The desire makes me restless some times. But my Maturity often helps me to get back to normal most of the times.  But when my desire had bad hit because of my illusions, I became more restless and insecure. My eager caused more damage.  I mostly care others than I do care myself and I don’t expect anything in return. In eager of  desire,  I expressed my care as my honesty, but it came out in some idiotic ways which  appeared like I am asking favor against my care.  This is obvious enough to create anger in other person as no one is asking me to take care of them.  My maturity also tells the same thing. It’s my nature of caring others, it should not be used to ask favor from other.  But the damage is already done.  Immaturity in the expression is already noticed.

I lost too much because of this immature behavior. But I must thank to the person who gave me this feedback. It really helped me in two positive ways. First , gave a chance to retrospect my behavior and improve. Second … gave me confidence, that I had higher level of maturity and bar is higher to deliver higher .

Thank you. 🙂