Pondering on festivals and festivities!

Time flies, a known fact, that I realise only when it's gone. Maybe because I'm busy enjoying the moments, or the mundane tasks of life take over. The latter is true for many of us. Recently, I read an intriguing article on being time wealthy, which stated how we waste time like it's nobody's business. Post-reading, I pondered that it is everyone's own perspective. What would you call a waste of time? Standing in the queue waiting for your turn at the bus stop? Waiting at the traffic lights to go green? Looking at your phone for hours without the slightest inkling of our surroundings? Or walking down the road to buy essentials instead of ordering online?

There are and could be millions of things we might term as a waste of time or an investment of it. We rarely talk about saving time collectively. My ideas for saving time might be yours for wasting it. The hilarity of this situation plays out when we have festivals! At any given point in time, there are festivals or festivities in various parts of the world, and I think we top the list. The amount of time invested in annual festivals (Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Chinese New Year, etc.) is enormous. The collective human hours spent on planning, preparing, celebrating, and post-clean-up feel never-ending.

I roughly invested or wasted, if you are on the other side of the argument, a couple of weeks for Diwali, from shopping to celebration. That is discounting the time I enjoyed with loved ones. The entire logistics of the festivities is such a prime topic that I learned there are now Apps and Chat GPT to help people plan the events and festivals. I continue to see advertisements, offers, tips, and tricks for Christmas starting from October.

It feels like, over the years, the festival and festivities are a marketing gimmick. We are enticed by the latest trends in celebrations, a channel to grab money from the public's pockets in the name of merriment. The roll call starts with new clothes, gifts, shoes, accessories, food, and even cleaning products before and after the festival. Have we lost our way from the simple, humble celebrations where love, laughter, and goodwill formed the foundation of festivals? Is the whole circus really required? Do we really need those fireworks that pollute the air or the adulterated food that makes people ill? Are the people who are not celebrating bearing the burden of it? I feel it is, at times, unfair to those people who wish to celebrate any festival calmly and quietly.

I completely understand the other side of the argument, that we only get to celebrate a few festivals anyway, so why should we not do what we wish? It is the trickiest question to answer, as it's subjective and depends on an individual's perspective. Each of us will have our own answers. But I feel we should take cues from the impact of our festivities on the environment. We have seen, in the last few months, unusual changes in our weather and nature's flurry in different parts of the world. I know nature is beyond our control, and it is challenging to link environmental impacts to our festivities. However, there are many things in our control, starting with reducing the use of toxic fireworks, using organic food, and recycling things as much as possible.

I continue to ponder how our actions, especially during major festivals, impact the environment, our health, finances, and the most precious commodity of all our time. Maybe in the future I will have a better perspective to share. Until then, I wish you enjoy the festivities and the new year with great joy and consciousness of the surroundings!