What Are You Doing?

Sometimes, I wonder how many developers are working behind this question. How many dollars being invested to get this answer. Not only developers but some psychiatrists as well, probably? I don’t know who started this status system first, was it Facebook? Or someone else? anyways, Facebook was really modest about this status updates from the beginning. They didn’t give much concentration on it at the beginning and so far I can recall people used to update their status when there was something “really” important and something that makes sense. Something educational, something that helps others?

And then we moved. New tools came, Twitter became extremely popular with some simple ideas. There were lot’s of new tools launched following Twitter’s success. FriendFeed was one of them, though their concept was a little bit different than twitter. We people got too many options to answer “what’s on our mind” or “what we are doing”.

Not only, we have options to choose where we want to say what we are doing but also we have so many third party softwares whos making our life even easier. We can say something on LinkedIn and it can come to Twitter, Friendfeed and then Facebook. We can use such tool like SocialToo that allows to update status to multiple places. Same goes for Desktop client TweetDeck, Seesmic or web client Brizzly. And then, Junal becomes really busy when one of them updates their software and adds new feature.

What we usually answer to these status taker? A lot of things! And almost 90% of them are about ourselves. What we like and what we don’t like. What we have and what we don’t have…and then a big sigh! We are still not satisfied…..

But are we not being social? Wait, let me correct….we are being “technically” social. And I guess we are doing 110% on this part. I have been keeping myself busy with this so called “Technically Social” world for last 2/3 years. No, I don’t have regret for what I have been doing or what I have done. But I regretted few days ago, after my marriage, when I realized that I was actually in a different world. When I had to visit to my relatives house with my wife, I felt there was something calling me back. I don’t blame myself for being too much addicted with this technical world but I do blame myself for not being in keep in touch with the actual society. I can remember, when I arrived in my village, how people received us. How our present gave them fun. My grandmother is about 105 years old. Every years she waits for me to see. But Junal never can manage time for her – sigh! I regret.

This year when I went to my village with my wife Tamanna, My grandmother was really happy. I saw a smile that I will never forget. She has nothing to do except sitting idle and counting the day she has in this beautiful world. I wonder how many people ask her what she is doing? She doesn’t have much options there, unfortunately.

One the way to my village

It makes me feel how selfish I’m. I don’t have much time for my relatives to visit them. Lots of my village people are coming in my mind right now. People who never get a chance to answer to someone about their life, their problems, their needs or anything…. but these people never complain! Still they smile, smile with 100% happiness when we people got 100+ complains about our life even after getting lots of facilities.

My grandmother, 105 years old!

I know, I wouldn’t meet these much relatives if I didn’t get married recently. I have this realization that we are totally in a different world. A world that makes us more selfish, more self centric and we are getting out of actual society day by day.

I don't know what they made for us, but that was very sweet of them

Do we have time to give ourselves sometimes to realize if we are really getting out of our actual society?

Personally, I have decided to meet this actual society often to ask “What are you doing”.