My Fresh & Juicy Tomato No. 5 - The OCTs: Obsessive–Compulsive Tunnellers

Tunnels are designed to get us there. Get us there straight. Straight and safely. ‘Certainty’ and ‘Safety’ being the operative thoughts here.

Metaphorically speaking, we are constantly building and using tunnels to ‘get there’.

This ‘there’ could be a milestone in a project that we are handling or a holiday we are planning for.

A foolproof plan is a tunnel. A well thought through plan ensures that you will ‘get there’ for sure. And you’ll get there straight, without a hitch.

What kind of holidays would people like? This seemed like a no-brainer to us – a small group of people working on an innovation project for a holiday company. Obviously a well-planned holiday! A no-brainer enough to be accepted as ‘the truth’ we could base our thinking on.

Most people we engaged with had happy memories of well-planned, well-executed holidays.

You get answers to questions you ask. New questions get you new answers. We decided to ask the reverse question: “Have you ever had a holiday that was totally unplanned yet very enjoyable?”

We came across some amazing holiday stories. More amazing than the stories, was their refreshingly different narrative and idiom. They were full of serendipity, unexpected discoveries, impossible situations, success in the face of odds, foolish errors, goose flesh, adrenalin and thrill.

They all agreed that a ‘tunnelled holiday’ could never have given them all this. “Unplanned holiday was it!” we inferred. “The whole industry has been targeting only the tunnellers - people who will not venture out without a well thought through plan. We will offer a compelling proposition to the non-tunneller.” There is an unaware non-tunneller in each one of us.

Tunnels are reassuring. They assure you that you WILL get there. And that it will be amazing once you get there. Assumption being: ‘There’ is better than ‘here’. Don’t let the ‘here’ waver you from your true goal.

A lot of us feel lost without tunnels. Look at how we tunnel our lives and that of our children.

Children are made to believe that their ‘real life’ is somewhere ‘there’ in the future. And the ‘here’ is only about preparing for a great ‘there’. Parents and teachers offload their anxieties on to their children in a concerted manner, trying hard to strip them of their natural live-the-moment attitude and morph into ‘adults’ like them – risk-averse, predictability seeking tunnellers.

“My child must become an engineer and I must provide him a robust ‘engineering tunnel’ (I must...I must...I must provide him everything that I pined for but never got).”

The tunnel ensures that the child doesn’t get distracted by temptations like, say a desire to become a filmmaker.

“Don’t waste your time with that camera son, work hard.”

“Children must learn delayed gratification. Study even if you don’t like it. You will love it once you get ‘there’.”

What about the ‘here’? Don’t we realize that the life is really a string of ‘heres’? An amazing life is a string of amazing ‘heres’. The tunnellers become great at pursuing ‘theres’ but are clumsy at dealing with ‘heres’. The moment their ‘there’ becomes a ‘here’, they don’t know what to do with it so they get busy with what they know best - pursuing the next elusive 'there'.

My Fresh & Juicy Tomato No. 4 - PROPPED-UP PEOPLE

Purnatva. The Sanskrit word for that blissful state we all crave. Absolute complete fulfillment. As we grow up, we find our own different ways of pursuing it.

The most basic form is the one related to our basic primitive needs – food for example.

Deficiency makes us hungry. Hunger drives us to consume. Consumption leads to fulfillment. Overtime we get hardwired to find fulfillment through consumption.

Consumption-fuelled fulfillment doesn’t just make us eat more it makes us who the economic-society wants us to be – a consumer.

Whenever we feel lifestyle-deficient we acquire and consume a lifestyle fix. Fixes come in many forms. A badge-car. A badge-suit. A badge-bag. A badge-job. Or sometimes even a badge-accent.

Our life-script (with translations):

“A Louis Vuitton bag! I-want-it-I-want-it-I-so-want it! I wish I could afford one.”

Translation: All the nice people I know own one. I would like to be like them (and not the miserable self I really am)

“It’ll be great if I could get one for the next party.”

Translation: I can’t be carrying a cheap Janpath when everyone out there will walk in holding LVs! It looks so cheap (my ‘cheapness’ will get found out!)

“Wow! I will really make an impact.”

Translation: I don’t really belong in there. The LV is my passport. It’ll help me announce my arrival and make me feel ‘equal’.

A FEW MONTHS LATER… the next party is upon me

“I can’t be carrying the same bag to the next party! I want another one.”

Translation: Now that I have established my image, I have to live up to it. I don’t want people to see my wretchedness.

“God! I can’t afford it this month. Let me somehow scrounge it.”

THE NEW BAG HAS BEEN BOUGHT… the party is behind me. A new LV advertisement in a badge-magazine I have just subscribed to, jumps at me. “The brand new range of LVs – blah-blah-blah”

Translation: If you are still using the old range, you are fuddy-duddy and totally uncool. You buy badge-bags to look cooler than you really are… remember? Come on, be a good consumer. Throw away that well-preserved collection you own – feel lifestyle-deficient again. Be ‘hungry’ and consume the new range. Fulfillment Guaranteed!

 “The all-new Louis Vuitton collection! I-want-it-I-want-it-I-so-want it! I wish I could afford one.”

We are ‘just right’ for the world we live in. The ‘big corporate’ wants us to buy & consume props – “Profits”! The government wants us to buy & consume props – “Economic activity, GDP, Taxes”! We want to buy & consume props – “to feed our chronically deficient self-esteem”!  Win-win-win!

Who loses? Well no one really. Only our sense of self-worth. Well, we can always prop it up with a brand new prop. And the Earth? The propped-up society will find a great prop for the environment too some day.