I am with you

I am with you. If you need any sort of emotional support, a shoulder to cry, a word of encouragement, someone to talk to, express your fears or frustrations, complain about any injustice, share your pain or happiness, or just a company, I am with you. We all need to be there for each other in a moment of need, this is an ideal I strive for, it may or may not happen, but there is no harm in trying. This post is not a reaction to the suicide of a young and successful Hindi cinema actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The post was planned and prepared much before that, I just felt the need to publish it after reading the news about this unfortunate incident. My views about mental illness and suicides were completely different while growing up in India and during my initial years in the USA, I used to think only weak people commit suicide. However, over the years I educated myself about the topic of mental health and learned a lot about it which I didn't know before. This learning changed my views completely and allowed me to look at my own life from a different perspective. Part of the reason for my ignorance can be attributed to the taboo associated with this subject in Indian society where I was born and grew up. Actually, it would be unfair to single out India for having a taboo associated with mental health-related issues, such a taboo still exists in many societies even today.

Mental health is a very complex subject. It is not easy for many to understand it, but everyone needs to make an effort to learn about it as we all may suffer from some mental health-related issues at some point in our lives. Whether we realize it or not, we all go through these things, the only difference is in some cases it is more severe compared to others. We all go through complex emotions, and our reactions can be vastly different towards the same incident, the intensity of emotions, and ways of expressing them differ from person to person. Many of us are vulnerable under certain situations, we feel insecure, scared, depressed, or anxious for some reason or for no reason at all. It is important to have some support during these unsettling times, it is especially important these days when families are nuclear and most people prefer to live a separate and independent life. It is not bad to be independent, rather it is a good thing, independence teaches us many valuable lessons. However, on many occasions, we need some psychological help and support, and if we are alone it is hard to find such support. We all need such support, we need someone with whom we can share our feelings, our fears, concerns, our highs and lows, where we can be ourselves without being judged. Even though we prefer to be independent and there is a physical distance that separates us, we can make use of technology to bridge that gap. Bridging this gap is now possible with the invention of social media, we all can support each other no matter where we live or how far we are from each other. Of course, it will be great to find someone like this among the people from our immediate surroundings, but if we can't, we should not hesitate to find genuine support in the virtual world.

I want to be one such support for people who need it. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me and I will try my best to be a person who could offer the required emotional support. It is easy to get in touch with me, apart from this blog, I am on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. I believe that offering someone support or hearing ear or encouragement is not a favor but can be a very rewarding experience for both people involved in it. I have done it on multiple occasions, someone did it for me when I needed such support and in both cases, it has enriched my life. Emotional exchanges are not easy, one has to cross a barrier before sharing their vulnerable side with others. Crossing this barrier can be easy for some and extremely difficult for some, it's a personal journey and personal challenge. It is true that emotional exchanges cannot be a one-way process, there needs to be a connection. Unless both people connect with each other there can not be a proper exchange of emotions, and there cannot be a bridge through which emotions can cross from one person to another, such connection is crucial. However, establishing an emotional connection does not always mean one can feel the pain or fear to the same extent as the next person is feeling, it is important to understand those feelings. It is extremely hard if not impossible to understand what exactly another person is going through. I have learned it through personal experience, it's easy to say "things will get normal," "be strong," or "don't worry," but sometimes things never get back to normal, people don't want to be strong, or they cannot stop worrying. A person who is offering support needs to recognize these feelings and then only can offer any useful support to someone going through an emotional crisis.

Depression or any other mental issue is real and let's talk about it. There is no shame in asking for help when we need it. People of all genders, sexual orientations, and social or economic backgrounds might go through mental health-related issues. Let's try to support each other and devote as much time as we can to help each other whenever one of us needs such help. I know that not everyone will be interested in devoting their time to this nor everyone can find some time to do this, let's try to contribute as much as we can within our limits. But if it is please consider it, mental health is as important as physical health, and if we can develop a community that can support each other's mental health, let's do it. Remember, I am with you if you need me.

Thanks for reading and please share your opinion about this topic. 

It's simple pedometer, but it changed my lifestyle

Nowadays various fitness devices are being launched every day in the market. Some of these are really popular, there are also many apps for cell phones which can measure and store your physical activity data. I guess there is a very compelling reason why these things are so popular and I can say this from my own experience. When I got this little device called a 'pedometer' as a gift from our company, I never thought that it was going to change my lifestyle so much. For people who don't know about this device, the pedometer measures the number of steps you take by sensing the motions of your body. It gives you a record of how much you move in a day. I consider myself a physically active person who prefers to walk or use a bicycle rather than using a car or scooter. I was under the impression that walking ten thousand steps per day would be easy for me but when I started using the pedometer, this belief was crushed. When I looked at the readings of my pedometer I realized how little people like me walk in their day-to-day lives. I was just hitting the mark of six thousand steps per day. To achieve my daily target of 10k steps I decided to walk to the office at least one way rather than taking the bus and also made sure that I do some exercise at home to make up the remaining steps. Since I can see my progress in numbers, it made me very conscious and I try to make sure that I walk enough every month or every week to complete whatever target I set. This was never the case before, I used to walk or do some exercise but there was no data for me to check if I was doing enough. With this device, I can quantify my physical activity and it made a lot of difference. Basically, this data pushes me to set new targets and work towards them.

Nowadays we all complain about how modern technology is affecting our lives. Most of the time modern technology is blamed for many bad things happening in our personal lives. Some of our health problems are also blamed on our addiction to many of these gadgets. Our sedentary lifestyle, changing modes of communication, or too much addiction to video games is often highlighted as a reason for some of our problems. However, it is also true that each of these things has contributed something positive to our lives. We can use these things for our own benefit, they assist us in staying informed or being more physically active, the choice is really ours. Lack of enough physical activity is really a problem for many of us. Compared to our previous generation there is a lot of physical comfort in our lives, and different modes of transportation are very easily accessible to our generation. Our children are going to face this problem more severely than we do, this sudden change in lifestyle has created a lot of health issues like obesity, high blood pressure (hypertension), type-2 diabetes, and other lifestyle-related health problems. Apart from an unhealthy diet, lack of enough physical activity is one of the reasons for these problems. We get tired without doing much physical work. Many of us don't find time because of our very busy schedules to go to the gym or to do some simple exercise at home. We all think that we have some genuine reasons for our inability to spare some time for physical exercise. Maybe those reasons are valid but definitely we all should try to incorporate some sort of physical activity in our day-to-day life. Walking is one such thing that most of us can include in our day-to-day life, just try to walk to any place that is at a walkable distance (20-30 minutes per day). No need to walk one hour or 10 miles per day and get really exhausted but instead of taking an elevator take the stairs, if the destination is just a couple of blocks away then walk instead of going by car. These small changes can reduce our need to take out separate time for daily physical activity. I am offering this suggestion as it worked for me, maybe everyone can't walk to the office or take the stairs instead of the elevator, everyone has to come up with their own way of being physically active. My pedometer has helped me a lot in this case, so much that every day I am eager to see that magical 10000 number on it which indicates that the target achieved for the day. It gives me some sort of happiness and a sense of achievement, and the next day I am on my quest to achieve that task all over again. I am sure everyone can find some driving force that can push them to become more active. After all, we have to do it for our own health. Let's try to become more active and more healthy. It is good for our body as well as our mind. Remember that old saying "A healthy mind resides in a healthy body."

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]