Change; Improve; Become Better. Or should you?

If you are a lunatic or have been living under the proverbial rock, you wouldn't be far from accessing and using social media like WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and myriad other tools that inundate our lives. I confess I am addicted to WhatsApp and Twitter. I was pretty active on Facebook for a few years, but quit. Really found that a difficult thing to do and not because I had second thoughts about quitting Facebook, but only because Facebook would not like to let me go! It kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to quit, delete my account, delete all the posts and replies, etc. I confirmed. It warned me that if I did so, I would lose everything. I know that and am prepared for it; that is why I have decided to quit you! C'mon, I have experience of saying 'katti' to my friends in my childhood days and did not talk to them for years on end, and most times for the flimsiest of reasons. So yes! Facebook, I am seriously not interested in continuing with my account. Please let me go! So what do you think Facebook finally did? The last pop-up message was that my account and messages, and replies, etc would be preserved for a few weeks in case I decided to reactivate my account. It was as if I wanted to end our relationship and Facebook, like a jilted lover, wouldn't let go. 

This blog post is not about Facebook, though having written that word, I became tempted to write something about my experience of ending my relationship with that social medium! In case you are similarly active on any of those social media outlets mentioned earlier, you may be inundated with various messages about how you should strive to be better; more efficient; more loving and caring; how change is not only good, but inevitable; and lastly we humans have achieved so much because individually and collectively we have transformed ourselves to be more effective and have always found ways to become a better person today than what we were yesterday.

So today, while I opened my Mozilla Firefox browser on my laptop, I got a range of links to articles and one of them caught my eye. It screamed in fairly bold letters, It’s Time To Stop Moralizing Every Daily Habit. What? Isn't that what I read everyday on my social media feed? Isn't that what every friend of mine wants me to do? I opened that link and realized it is a collection of various articles that have appeared in getpocket.com and you can find them here. Some articles that are embedded in the link are titled very provocatively as below:

1. Why waking up earlier isn't necessarily better! Did I get that right? Do you really think so? I have a habit of waking up at 5.30 and am now thinking of waking up at 5. And here is someone who wants me to wake up at probably 8. The author is lucky my father isn't alive; else he would have chewed up the writer. He hated anyone he saw sleeping after he had brushed his teeth! That was the limit of his tolerance for 'waking up late'.

2. There is no such thing as "junk food". Yes, you read it right. There is nothing called junk food. So what about "Super Size Me"? Is that a fake story? This is what is mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the movie:

         Super Size Me is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003, during which he ate only McDonald's food. The film documents the drastic effect on Spurlock's physical and psychological health and well-being. It also explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit and gain. 

So what should we believe? My advice: Avoid junk food like the plague, or better still like Covid!

3. You are not so bad: The case against Self-Improvement. Now this really got me thinking about what the writer wants to convey. Now I realize that this itself is a collection of various articles and you can find the links to them over here. One of them tells me "What it is like to get worse at something". Seriously? Another one goes "How to be mediocre and be Happy with yourself". I would be mad at myself if I didn't find ways to do things more efficiently and effectively over time. I have trained for that, dammit!

Do let me know if you want to change or want to be worse off!

Cheers!