Video Information:
Interview Session, 28.01.2020, Greater Noida, India
Context:
How should we spend our weekend?
What's so special about weekend?
How to spend your Sunday?
What should a weekend for a youngster be like?
How to a youth spend his weekend?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Interview Session, 28.01.2020, Greater Noida, India
Context:
How should we spend our weekend?
What's so special about weekend?
How to spend your Sunday?
What should a weekend for a youngster be like?
How to a youth spend his weekend?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00The youngsters today have found a variety of ways to spend their weekends.
00:14Talking to you, I would want to know, what is your approach towards how should a youngster
00:21really spend their weekend?
00:22I'll come straight to the point.
00:24First of all, this question should not really arise.
00:29The very distinction between weekday and weekend portends trouble.
00:43It means that the weekend is being seen as some kind of a period of recuperation.
00:58And if the weekend happens to be, bluntly speaking, a period of recuperation, then the
01:09weekdays by implication have been a period of oppression.
01:19So first of all, try not to be in a situation where the weekends become special to you.
01:27Or even a single day, like Sunday, becomes special to you.
01:32If you are someone who has stopped giving importance to Saturdays and Sundays, you'll
01:39go far in life.
01:42And if you are someone who is always found looking forward to the next Sunday, next Saturday,
01:48it means trouble.
01:52And as I say this, I know what kind of impact these words would have on most of the audience.
02:00Because that's what most of us do.
02:02I too have done that at some stage in my life.
02:07But that's not healthy.
02:14If you have a job, be engaged in a kind of work that does not make it necessary for you
02:23to seek relief, or relaxation, or recuperation, or rehabilitation over the weekend.
02:36Work is life.
02:39Work must not be something that taxes you and drains and saps out your energy.
02:47Work must be something that really rejuvenates you.
02:52You must be looking forward to a Monday.
02:57You must be looking forward to a Sunday only as much as you look forward to a Monday.
03:04So look forward to everything.
03:07And most of all look forward to what you are doing right now.
03:13Otherwise anything that you are really seeking to look away from is a point of disease in
03:21your life.
03:22Right?
03:23I don't want to look at one particular thing on this table.
03:27There is so much available here, on offer here.
03:32And I don't want to look at this.
03:34Because I don't want to look at this, I am forced to not to turn my neck this way.
03:40So now, this is special, right, right, right.
03:44All these are reactions.
03:46Looking forward to something is always a reaction against something that you do not want to
03:53look at.
03:54And if there is something in your life that you do not want to look at, why is that thing
03:59first of all there in your life?
04:03Do you get this?
04:05So the vivaciousness of life, the sheer exuberance with which you welcome any particular day
04:21or moment must have a certain uniformity.
04:28I look forward to this, I look forward to this, I look forward to that, I look forward
04:32to that.
04:33Which means that the entire portfolio of things, subjects in my life has nothing rotten included.
04:43The portfolio, the set of things has all elements healthy in it.
04:55But I fully well know that this happens to be an answer more on the ideal side.
05:05So given that most people are engaged in jobs that are boring, taxing, life sapping, what
05:17does one do?
05:19One can use the weekends to uplift yourself.
05:24There is a difference between uplifting yourself and recreating yourself or entertaining yourself.
05:34There is a difference in these two approaches.
05:37Let's get that straight.
05:39So Monday to Friday I was harassed and troubled and I fully well knew that I am not at all
05:49enjoying the stuff that I am doing.
05:52So on Saturday and Sunday I drowned myself in liquor and I tried all kinds of entertainments
06:04just to forget the impact that the previous five days have had upon me.
06:12That is one approach.
06:14That's what people mostly do, unfortunately.
06:19And the other approach is, alright, I understand that right now the circumstances are too heavy
06:25on me and I have to somehow bear with a suboptimal job for, let's say, next six months or eight
06:35months.
06:36There is some reason.
06:37I am carrying some debt or something.
06:40So that Monday to Friday schedule is probably going to be there for the next few months.
06:44What do I then put my Saturday and Sunday to?
06:48I'll use my Saturday and Sunday to uplift myself, not entertain myself, not prepare
06:57myself to again enter the same grind the coming Monday, but I'll uplift myself.
07:05I'll undertake a project of a kind that really does some good to my mind.
07:15I know that it tires me down when I'm in my office, but I'll happily invite a little
07:26more tiredness, at least of the physical kind on Saturday and Sunday as well.
07:33Instead of compensating for lack of sleep by remaining on the bed for 10 hours, I would
07:41rather work extra hard on the weekends.
07:46Why not volunteer at some worthy place?
07:53Why not give expression to some passion you might have had?
08:03You see, I am not generalizing, but in general, people undergo a certain degradation when
08:13they join jobs after campus.
08:19The degradation is visible in many ways.
08:21I'll give you the symptoms.
08:23One, they gain in weight.
08:27A fellow who has graduated at the age of 21 or 22, go and see him when he is 24, assuming
08:36that he has been working since last 2 years, and you'll find him at least 5 to 10 kg heavier.
08:44Secondly, their intake of booze multiplies because the money comes in.
08:53All this is not an expression or symptom of an elevated consciousness or a better quality
08:59of life, simply put.
09:01This merely shows that you are much better off in campus.
09:06Graduation has done no good to you and there are other symptoms as well.
09:11Till the time you are in campus, you at least get time to play because if you are in a half
09:20decent campus, you have some sports facilities.
09:24So sometimes you do drag yourself to, let's say, the badminton court or the tennis court.
09:32Once you are in the job, you totally stop playing or something.
09:37Maybe now you go and buy a fancy gym membership, but that membership remains, as you very well
09:43know, unused.
09:46You might have spent 20k for an yearly membership, but you probably visit the gym 2 days a month.
09:55So that's another symptom.
09:57Then the quality of the discussions that you have with your peers, nose dives.
10:07It will be limited to just the people you are probably living with or your colleagues
10:11in your company or maybe a few friends that you cultivate online.
10:17The vibrancy in the discourse that was there in the campus is lost.
10:30So how to recover from these losses?
10:34Weekends is the time.
10:37Continue to read.
10:40Continue to advance in some art, some craft, music, dance, trekking, whatsoever appeals
10:52to you.
10:53Volunteer.
10:54That was the first thing I said.
10:58Find a worthy place to go to.
11:00See how you can contribute there.
11:03You are anyway earning well, assuming that you do not have too much of debt on your head.
11:14And volunteering doesn't require too many funds in that sense.
11:18If you have to watch movies, you better watch a decent movie.
11:26Booze doesn't help.
11:30I'm not something who would say that you have to be a teetotaller.
11:36But what's the point?
11:38All that you are getting is a beer belly.
11:41It's not helping you.
11:42And there are several other things.
11:46You start spending money on unworthy things till the time you are in the campus.
11:53You didn't have too much money.
11:54Now that you have money, weekends is the time to splurge.
11:58And all kinds of stuff that you know will be of use to you, starts making its way into
12:04your room.
12:05And you know that you are not going to use any of it.
12:09What else do you do?
12:10What else do you do?
12:11Dancing.
12:12Drinking, dancing.
12:13Some people start chasing women or men more actively.
12:23And given that now they are heavily disfigured, they get very little success.
12:32That's very limited thing also, so you go, you bitch about everything that has happened.
12:42So you complain about what has happened at work and the next day you are back at it.
12:50Part of the reason for that is we start feeling settled as soon as we are into a job.
12:58Many of us, not really everybody.
13:02And when you start feeling settled and the feeling that you have arrived on the scene
13:06sets in, then there is no inner urge left for further improvement.
13:13As long as you are facing a challenge, as long as you are up to something, you remain
13:18green within, you remain throbbing, the heart keeps beating at some rate.
13:24But the moment you get the feeling that now I have arrived and I am all set and all that
13:29I need is a wife and expressions of expenditure, then you start decaying from within.
13:38Right?
13:39That's one of the things that I wanted to also bring about, because when you said use
13:42your weekends, it will obviously require more energy, but then a lot of people just say
13:47that we are so drained out from the week that all we want to do on the weekend is to sleep.
13:53It's a very bad cycle.
13:55Weekdays drain you out.
14:00Weekends you spend in just somehow recovering from the drain, where is then the entire week
14:07taking you?
14:10Are you progressing?
14:11You have to somehow find your way out of this very limiting and demeaning cycle.
14:23And remember, your company or employer has no real stake in enriching your weekends.
14:34All that he wants is that you come back a little freshened up on Monday morning.
14:40So if you have totally misutilized your weekends, your employer will really have no objections
14:47against it.
14:50It's your own personal responsibility to know fully well that your weekdays are sold out.
14:57You sold off five days of your week in order to earn money.
15:02Now all that you have is the two days.
15:04These two days are yours.
15:06So use them very wisely, very energetically.
15:10You are still young.