DATED – 25th July 2015

How does this kind of a lifestyle sound – wake up in the morning, get ready, leave for work, work for about 8 hours, come back home, have dinner, watch some TV and off to sleep. OR this – wake up, get the kids ready for school, cook breakfast for all, do the household chores, cook lunch, rest for a while, leave kids for classes, prepare dinner, wind up the kitchen, and doze off. Interesting? I know it isn’t.

Looks like a mundane, routine life day in and day out, isn’t it? Our life seems to have become predictable; and maybe, so have we! When you ask someone, ‘How are things?’ Haven’t you got this response (at times even you would have said it), ‘Same old routine. Nothing new.’ But, as human beings, our lives are not meant to be predictable.

I am not saying, leave everything and become unpredictable. That will be foolish. I suggest that apart from our daily routine, let us also do a few additional things –

• Pursue your hobby, if you have one. It is not impossible to spare a few hours every week
• Go out for dinner/ drive with anyone you enjoy being with
• Do some kind of social work, which makes you feel good about yourself
• In case you are feeling bored one day, watch a movie out of schedule
• Once in a way, it is okay not to act ‘proper’ (read polished)
• At times, it is okay to eat ice cream and let the calorie meter go high. We can cover up the next day
• The kids will love it, if the teacher could leave aside studies for one period and play games in class
• How about giving your office a half-day, for a World Cup match?
• It would be cute to get flowers for all the women/ girls in the house, one fine day
• Drive yourself from Pune to Mumbai, ask the driver to take rest
• Go trekking with a few friends on an early Sunday morning
• Organise any events, if it excites you
• Take up responsibilities where you thought it was not possible to be executed

Personally, I feel that doing these unpredictable things is what adds excitement to our lives. Else, life seems so boring. Day in and day out we seem to be doing the same things. Please beware that it is important to be predictable emotionally; but be unpredictable in our daily routines. Breaking the routine, releases us and makes us look forward to things. It has a flip side though – it will demand you to go out of your comfort zone. It will get some butterflies in your stomach too. But, it is all worth it.

Vis-à-vis my life –

I love being unpredictable. I love surprising myself and people with various things I do. I look forward for breaking monotony of life, in any possible way. For me, doing the same things over and over again is just so boring. I truly feel that if I keep doing the same things, my life span will get reduced from over 100 years to less than 70 years.

Being unpredictable will mean taking initiative. But let’s understand, we are not doing this for anyone else, but for our own selves. In this case, we must be 100% selfish. Henceforth, people should never be able to say – “I know he would do like this; I know she would say this.” They should be left wondering – what is he/ she upto next? It’s a joy to be PREDICTABLY UNPREDICTABLE!