Mean could be Mean: “Not every mean is golden”

December 23, went as expected, slow and heavy. January was a turmoil to begin with year 2024. Feb and March were more of acclimatisation and adaptation. January was about making me realise that you have to deal with fools, there is no turning back, you have to give a deaf ear to immature words and a blind eye to illogical behaviour. Not every time you should choose the midway or the mean because you have to decide on either one of it. Ignore it or accept it but there is nothing like fake it to agree. At this point of the mid of life, you have to realise and be happy that you have been growing up, not only physically, but also mentally, you have been shedding off your negative points from your personality and have been working on coping up with your own dark side. If age is just a number, mind well you shouldn’t age only with the numbers. Growing up is a value-added wholistic process, it is evolving with modification and development whereas taking a midway is escaping the situation and stagnating the growth.

       In this academic year, blended learning and teaching is always a suggestive way in education system but face-to-face teaching and learning has not only an effective approach but also with a personal touch. Blended learning and teaching is a midway leading nowhere, specially in the field of science. Post realisation, I concluded that not a single session I would go online, I may conduct extra discussions, but that would always happen off-line, where I will be able to read the faces, understand the body language, answer the queries right there, and ensure that the topic is uncovered. Similarly at work, I began to out-rule the midway practice of sending messages on text or watsapp and started preferring a face to face meet preferably or a phone call possibly. This avoided miscommunication, misunderstanding and contributed to utmost clarity in the communication process.

     Just when towards the end February I got pickpocketed, lost my phone with every other content and detail, I got disconnected from the virtual world. That’s when I realised that my eyes, brain and mind were relaxed, and not under any kind of a stress. It was total absence of a gadget and hence there was no midway to knowledge or communication. I attained calmness by directly interacting with the authentic sources. Without panicking slightest, I regained my important official contacts, files, data, and emails successfully in the due course of time. And definitely this ‘no gadget’ phase helped me understand the significance of existing into the real world. The riches I found were all treasured offline. 

       This time I put my birthday alert off from all the social platforms and only those who truly remembered my birthday connected to me. There was no midway, either there was wishing or there was no wishing but due to this, I could collect all the close contacts that I had lost. But the bizarre thing happened was my mother forgot my birthday and in fact, she went out of station and out of city without even wishing me. Later when she recollected She wished me for my birthday, but did not give an explanation because we both knew the date was forgotten. So I like the clarity of the thought when one is not vibing in a midway state and I like the way very transparently it was communicated that a date or day can be forgotten with other priority thoughts on the mind (with birthdays being so overrated these days) and this was totally okay over the soothing fantasy greyscale explanation. 

    Many a times, although not always, taking a mean or a midway is a display of lack of clarity and indecisiveness. It’s a way of satisfying everyone around (which is impossible to do) and a lack of potential as a decision maker. This definitely leads to devaluation and degradation of the quality quotient. 

We don’t have to decide the status of our mind and thoughts presuming the reaction of another person. Right in our thought process, we don’t have to take a mean for anything and everything irrationally. Taking mean has nothing to do with being just or avoiding disparity, it’s good as a statistical tool for scientific numbers but not applicable  to human/social behaviour. So if you are choosing a midway or a mean you are not being a lord of justice because every mean is not golden, think before you consider one. Taking mean is like choosing to live in greyscale, you cannot always swim or keep any task hanging between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tagging it as a golden mean. All that I mean is choosing mean could lead to being mean at times to self and many times to someone else.