“I feel so mentally worn out all the time… age is catching up.” Yogesh, 52 years.
The “mentally worn out” feeling isn’t age-related, brother. It’s habit-related. All of us, to a greater or lesser degree, repetitively perform the same tasks in the same manner day after day until a point arrives when we do it so mechanically that our brain is switched off and we are not aware that we did it or are doing it.
That’s because the mind has got so bored with the endless repetition that it does not register the task even when it’s being performed or care to remember it after it’s been performed.
Now that might be fine with brushing your teeth, shaving your stubble or lacing your shoes, but extend that to emotions and relationships and you have a real problem. You keep feeling the same old feelings with people until you stop feeling the feeling and start thinking that you feel the feeling, and one day you don’t even think that you feel — you just do a mechanical empty shell of an act that simulates without stimulation. Zap, you zombied away all genuine warmth and spontaneity out of your life.
Now repeat this for months and years and some beautiful part of your self will have quietly died. I can see huge chunks of humanity teetering in that direction, discern so many people who are falling off the edge into vacant and mindless limbo. Maybe you are one of them — or maybe you are not, because some part of you has registered that the rest of you is falling off into a stupor, and you decided to do something about it.
Well, do something about it. Start by doing the most ordinary thing in a most extraordinary way. Figure out 10 innovative ways to brush your teeth, for starters, and when you wake up to silly new sensations, discover hidden meanings in the most mundane things, just extend that attitude to everything else in your life. Create a new you out of the decaying old one. It’s quite simple and totally delightful. Come on, wake up!