The Square Mile
Yesterday I took a walk through the City of London after perhaps a few
years of being in Hong Kong. I went from Moorgate station, through Bank, to
London Bridge where I used to work. I passed the Bank of England, and various
other prominent financial institutions. I’d walked the same path hundreds of
times, over many years, but this time it was very different. I recalled being
at University and the reality of getting a job hitting home and being very
disappointed that University life would end and I would need to enter a place
that so many people complained about. A monotonous routine, horrendous rush
hour commutes, bad bosses, and many more factors that played into stressful
years in the City that accumulate to leave you less fit, fried out, but keeping
holding on financially, with perhaps a few nice holidays and a supported
family. Everyone is in the same game. What was the difference between my walk
through the Square Mile in London 8 years ago, as opposed to now? Well, I have
worked somewhere else for a substantial chunk of time, done things I hadn’t
done before and wasn’t planning to do which take a substantial engagement of time
and energy. Those are big factors; what you prioritise in life, will be the
source of pleasure or distress.
The Volume
I’ve got into a routine of watching the UFC Mixed Martial Arts events
on TV every two weeks or so. They’re usually in the US on Saturday nights,
meaning they’re aired in Hong Kong on Sunday mornings. It’s a nice time to tune
in as Sunday morning is typically a time for rest. There are so many fights on
the fight card typically, and sometimes it takes hours and hours to reach the
main fight, sometimes the entire morning and past lunch time. So after watching
a few times like this with my undivided attention, I thought I could be doing
other things at the same time, or tune in and out of fights whilst sorting
things out in the house. Every time I’d tune out to do something else, the commentators
would get excited, so I’d rush back to the television, and it would usually
turn out to be nothing too exciting, so I’d go back to what I was doing, with a
little frustration that I stopped what I did. After this happening many times,
I thought about what it was which was making me tune in again. It was the
commentary, the hype. So I thought, when am doing something else, let me turn
the volume down as this is what’s really attracting me back to the TV, and more
than half the time it’s pointless. Ok, I may miss a few good moments in a fight,
but I end up completing my other tasks, and then tuning back in for the main
fight card with my undivided attention, which am more than happy with on a
Sunday morning. I then experimented further. Even on the main fight, there was
definitely a correlation between my level of interest, and the volume of the
TV. Even in the most exciting of fights, if I turned it down, I noticed I was
less interested in what was going to happen. I experimented with the same thing
when watching the penalty shootouts in the World Cup recently, for me it had
the same effect; I was less ‘affected’ when the volume was down. We are what we
put into our heads, and one of those things is sound, vibrations. If we control
the things that enter our system, we can control the extent to which we’re affected
by things.
It's all still the same, you don't have to be
Did I feel more relaxed walking through London after having spent a
solid amount of time in another country? Yes, without a doubt. Why was this so?
Nelson Mandela once said, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” The bosses are still mostly around. The hectic rummaging is still there. The
transport hasn’t changed much. Almost everything is the same, except I’ve
turned the volume down. I have seen a little more now, I’ve done a few more
things, and therefore I see those same streets now as a bunch of old buildings
with people hustling around doing the same thing they were doing ten years ago,
except looking a little older. Previously it was everything to me, to my
friends, my colleagues, it was life dominating. You’re surrounded by it, it was
the priority. The volume was turned up really high on working at a prestigious
place, making money, and showing that you are. Now it’s quite simply not. Does
this attitude stop you from engaging effectively with it? Absolutely not. Some
of the most competent and inspiring leaders, I can now see, have always had
this kind of attitude, and yet they’ve engaged with the corporate world so well
and in such a balanced way. Others have not. It’s our choice what we be, how
high we put the volume, how much we’re affected, how we treat others, and
ultimately we choose what we want our destiny to be by deciding what we feed ourselves
with.
Sanat Kumara to King Prthu, Srimad Bhagavatam 4.22.33
