We live in a time where there has never been abundance in resources, longer life expectancy, lowered survival risks. On the contrary, so much abundance and risk-free living is getting us into a bigger question “What to do with it”. In this context of ‘good living’ our ancestors would surely think we now live in some Golden age,  but with the increased number of living years, this modern generation is only getting more number of sleepless nights. Lives of the youth are plagued with vain material pursuit; they are struggling with aimlessness and uncertainty, the inner peace is sinking into deep insecurity. What sort of uncertainty or insecurity is this? Is that of losing a job, falling from a height, meeting an accident, suffering from terminal diseases or social isolation? Researchers say “modern life is not good for mental health”, looking at the frequency of symptoms associated with anxiety and depression. The reasons are not always as direct as we think. Besides debt, job, addictions, relationship problems, illness or injury, we are stressed because we think, perhaps overthink– that there is not enough time for leisure, that we don’t have as much money as we want, our work culture is pressurizing, friends are doing a lot better in life, we are stagnating & not exploring experiences as much as we want, we are not as successful as we wanted to be.

Research provides a lot of evidence that the teenagers are cursed with troubled sleep, memory problems, lacking in concentration & learning abilities while young adults are negatively impacted with loss of appetite, obesity, sexual dysfunction. There are multiple layers in social and clinical depression manifesting into behavioral issues, failure in relationship, professional meagerness to suicidal & criminal tendencies.

This rise in depression and anxiety leaves few burning questions now, why are we are feeling this way?

Are we really not seeing through the two-way mirror of materialism? Can’t we see the diminishing value of all the worldly pleasures we are buying in exchange of our hard-earned money & time? Are we able to weigh up the fruits of our labor any more? We are spent miserably on the virtual community life of the social media. We are lonelier than ever before, ceaselessly scared of missing out.  We are even molding our real life to become a reflection of its virtual counterpart. The sum of our worth is now based upon what we can decorate our life with.

Are we not fooling ourselves in the name of relationship? Our friendships are meant for only tagging on Facebook or Instagram. We live in an age where our friendships are based less on shared experiences and more on shared views.  We can now edit our friends’ list making relationships more disposable, we can now ‘block’ a friend from the childhood when we fall out even on the smallest matter;  We don’t anymore have to tolerate an annoyingly needy friend in real life. Aren’t we becoming more self-centered losing the old sense of belonging that we once had in our championships. The very fabric of our societies are being torn up giving way to deep-rooted  anxiety and alienation. We are now focused on goals that are out of reach for most of us. We want instant fame, we want quick money. We yearn after a certain image to build, to showcase without trying to fulfill the real purpose of life. We are training our minds to believe we deserve more than we’re capable of achieving. This purposeless pursuit of material achievements is directly linked to extreme mental anguish which after a certain point  in the process brings in physical disability and even untimely death.  This is a threateningly chaotic time when we should halt and throw these questions to ourselves and our peers too    attempt to redress the lost balance by taking back control over our modern lives.

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The post Where we are heading to with our modern lifestyle? appeared first on StarZing.