Loneliness in 21st Century

"I wish you were here. Your love would have helped me feel good about myself." He sent her the message on Instagram and went back to sleep.

The next day, he woke up early in the morning, opened his phone to check for any new messages. As expected, there was nothing. He calmly messaged her Good Morning and slowly typed his whole schedule for the day.

It had become his routine to be in touch with her either through social media or through phone. They had known each other for the past 7 years and in love for the past 4 years. Or at least he was. \

Few months ago, little did he know, she had gone to a party when he was out of town and she had fallen in love with someone else. She called it 'struck by lightning'. From that day, her interest in him dwindled and reduced to such an extent that she demanded a breakup. Naturally, it was difficult for him. He pursued, kept on trying but to no avail. She was so lost in love that she blocked him everywhere - her phone, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and what not. She didn't leave any stone unturned and ensured that he isn't able to connect with her at all.

But he was stuck in the past. Even though the world around him had moved on but he didn't. He was in love and missed her badly.

"Darling, today I miss you a lot. I wish you were here to see how alone I am without you." He messaged her at the end of the day and went back to sleep.

On some days, he would dream that she would unblock him from all the social media. Suddenly all the messages would sync in to her phone and she would realise how much he missed her. It would melt her heart. She would own her mistakes and would come back to him. That thought would bring a smile on his face even though he knew it was next to impossible for something like this to ever happen.

It was fine Sunday Delhi morning. Winters had set in. He woke up early in the morning and messaged her good morning as it was part of his routine. Then he drank hot tea slowly and stood up to go to the washroom. He ignored the messages by his friends and colleagues. He brushed his teeth lost in thought. He wondered what Sunil was doing. He hadn't been in touch with her for years. The last time he had a huge fight with him regarding something which he doesn't even remember. But his ego stopped him from acting on that impulse. Quietly he washed his face and came back under the cozy blanket lying on his bed. He opened his laptop and started reading his work mails. One by one, he kept on replying to them.

After the break-up, work had been his support. He had started spending more time at work, letting it engulf him completely. Initially, he convinced himself saying that as he has a lot of free time, he should use it to further his career. And he worked harder than ever. It had its side effects also but he didn't care about it. There were only two things in his mind - she and work. Rest all things took a back seat.

The clock struck 12. He got up from bed to eat. He had two pieces of bread with jam. Then finally, he opened his messages on Whatsapp to read them. 200 group messages and 1500 unread messages, and that too in one night. "Oh it will take me hours to go through them," he thought to himself. But that didn't deter him. He started reading the messages one by one, critically analysing and replying to wherever it deemed him necessary to reply. By lunch time, he had read all the messages to his satisfaction. He didn't reply to any of his personal messages, thinking he would reply to them later as when he would have free time. He went back to sleep to calm himself.

It was later in the evening that he woke up with a sharp pain in his chest. As soon as he got up, the pain vanished. The pain was very mild and felt like a needle had stuck to his chest. Few moments later, there was another sharp pain. For the next 30 minutes, the pain was coming and going away. He was confused about what to do. He shouted for his flat mate, Ashish. Ashish came running in to the room asking what is the matter.

“I am having chest pains and I don’t know why!” he replied.

Ashish, fearing the worst, asked him to get ready as quickly as possible. He got into the car, parked just outside the house, and waited for him to get into the passenger seat. Ashish then quickly drove for 15 minutes to the nearest doctor.

The doctor took 30 minutes to examine him. He did a series of tests to determine the cause of the pain. Finally, with no conclusive result, he gave his report.

“There is nothing physically wrong with you. All your vitals are okay. However, due to modern lifestyle, eating habits and stress has caused vitamin deficiencies in your body which has resulted in pains.”

He and Ashish were relieved as soon as doctor said those words. The doctor continued.

“However, you must change your habits to better otherwise the next time we will meet under dire consequences.”

The doctor's words hit him hard. Quietly, lost in thought, he sat in the car. He didn't utter a single word or when provoked answered in a single sentence to Ashish's questions.

That night, sleep didn't come to him as quickly as it did compared to normal days. The whole night he turned from side to another, wondering how can stress cause anything to him. He was young and had a long life ahead of him. Stress related aches were reserved for old people. He had never imagined something like this ever happening to him. It was the first time in a long time that he had forgotten to message her on Instagram.

The next day, he woke up late in the morning. It was half past 10. His head was numb with pain. Slowly getting up from bed, he went to the bathroom to wash himself and get ready for office. And it was another stressful day for him. He worked till late in the night, making presentations and running here and there to finish the tasks allotted to him. His company believed in the mantra - "Go on adding workload on a weekly basis till the man fails!" His ego will never let him fail. Whenever, he was close to failing, he would go the extra mile to prove himself and his doubters wrong. All his bosses were happy with his never die spirit.

It was 11 at night when he finally booked the cab to go home. In the cab, he felt like talking to someone and explain his current situation. In his youthful days, he would pick up his phone and call up any random person in the phone directory to talk to, regardless of whether he was close to that person or not. But now, no one came to his mind. He didn't know whom to call. In the race of life, he had lost touch with everyone and now felt odd in calling up anyone for anything. In 20 minutes, he reached home. He changed his clothes, ate his food and went to sleep, without talking to anyone except for exchanging pleasantries with his flatmate Ashish.

That week, he didn't talk to anyone. Not talking to anyone took a toll on his mind. The whole week, apart from sharp pains in chest, there was constant headache. Medicine didn't help. In the weekend, he was to board flight to Goa which he didn't. He was so lost that he didn't even care to cancel his flight. He messaged Pallavi, his lost an old friend. But he couldn't even express to her clearly about was going in his mind. His 'near death' experience had brought a new side to his personality. And he didn't know how to deal with it.

A week later, he woke up early in the morning. Without thinking too much, he simple wore his shoes and went on a short run. The run made him feel good about himself. That day, for the whole day, he didn't feel any pain in any part of his body except for his legs, which was obvious pain. Many people complimented the big smile and asked for the reason behind it. But he couldn't express the joy of running to anyone clearly. He shrugged his shoulders and went about his day.

For 21 days, he kept on going for a run early in the morning. To ease the pain in the knees, he ordered the most expensive shoes from Amazon. And slowly, the ugly side of his 'stress struggle' went away. As his head cleared, he started to think clearly and analysed the reason for his stress. He realised that he didn't want any more exponential growth and wanted normal growth like his peers. Exponential growth would do more harm to him in the long run compared to normal growth. He looked around for more examples and came to the same conclusion upon seeing the physical condition of his office colleagues. A scary thought went through his mind. 'He was a good, diligent and cooperative worker', he didn't want his tombstone to read those words. And with those words in his mind, he wrote down all the negative things in his life. The first item on the list was to let her go. She hadn't bothered to talk to him since the break up and yet he hoped for her to come back. No more of waiting for her. So he stopped messaging her on Instagram.

Next agenda on the list was to calm himself. So he developed a routine. Every morning, he decided, he would go for a run for 30 min. After which, he would come back and listen to peaceful soothing music till there was no other thought in his mind. He would then get ready and leave for work. In the evening, upon returning from work, he would call up one long lost friend and talk for a good amount of time. The routine helped in improving his self confidence and reduced a lot of weight from his head. The last piece of the puzzle, and the toughest was on how to align himself to normal growth. He knew it would take him months to get the right answer but it was necessary.

To change his career, he started to do a lot of introspection and soul searching. First thing he did was to divide his personalities in to fundamental elements i.e. desire - money, passion and power, collaboration style - individual or team based, working style knowledge based or execution based and more. This deep introspection helped him a lot in understanding himself and his abilities. He realised there were boundaries to his abilities and his needs. And he should align his career around those boundaries. After a lot of introspection, he realised his dream job.

It was 90 days ago when he had first started running early in the morning. Now it had become a habit for him to wake up early in the morning and go about his routine. He had become very active on LinkedIn too. He would connect with a lot of people, search for opportunities to crack his dream job. But God hadn't started to smile on him. But he didn't lose hope. Thanks to the new routine, it felt as if his soul was refreshed. No amount of rejections let him down. He knew deep in his heart, all he needed was one phone call to crack his dream job. And he had full faith in his abilities that he will be able to crack it. His new found faith didn't have any adverse effect on his work. On the other hand, the quality and quantity of his work output improved tremendously in this time period.

At last he got the dream call, through his old boss in his previous company. And he managed to crack the interview process with ease.

His transformation from a lost soul to energised self was completed.