How High Do You Want to Keep Your Standards?

Okay, so here is an update no one asked for – My exams are starting from Tomorrow and I’ll be going to school to give offline exams. But the thing is that I’m not pumped up about the exams – not only because exams suck and scare the hell out of students, but also because I’d actually see my friends but still won’t be able to do anything fun with them.

Like imagine this –

You wake up in the morning, snooze the alarm for 5 more minutes which magically become 20 minutes. You get ready fast enough to be on par with your on-time routine and you walk out of your house and meet your friends on the way to the school (or your bus stop).

After discussing the last day’s amusing events that you have actually discussed the last itself, you reach the school. Upon entering your class, you scan across the room, seeing a few sleepy heads down on the table you spot your friends debating about something and coming to you asking which of them is right or wrong. You ask them to let you take a breath and at least keep your bag down.

Just like that, even you indulge in the debate. Of course until the class teacher comes in and begins the day. A few hours go by, with talking in class, with some antics and food in the exchange of periods. Then it is recess where either lunch boxes are opened for the first time in the day, or the leftover food from interchange of periods is eaten. Many times, it would be followed by you either borrowing money from someone or lending it to someone for getting food from the canteen. After a few harmless fights and arguments, and reconciliation of friends separated by sections, the pattern before the recess is repeated. 

After the final bell of the day, it is all chaos after the school gets over. Everyone has something to tell their friends and the bus engines add to the hustle bustle. You have so much to tell your friends that you talk at a supersonic speed. After all, it is only a small time before the buses leave. But this is a good type of chaos.

You are involved in some more lighthearted nonsense before you reach home, that you know will be discussed again tomorrow.

Sounds so good, doesn’t it? It feels so refreshing… so precious. (I won’t be able to do much of this though 😓)

Your day may not be the same as this, but it would be something along these lines if you’re a school student. Even if you are working currently, I think you could relate to a few parts of this (sorry, I don’t really know what a day in office looks like). 

After the lockdown many of us crave for a day like this a normal day like this. When covid has (physically) separated us, all we would love is to meet our loved ones, hug them and live our day just like we used to. I want this so much, that when a day like this will come, it’ll be a perfect day for me.

But that’s where the irony is; my current perfect day was actually just a normal day a year back. 

For a lot of us (possibly not for everyone), a normal day in our lives a year earlier is what we would love to have right now. Our standards for what we call a good day have actually been lowered by months of lockdown (not that we shouldn’t appreciate our daily life). The basic day for the past us is actually a good day for the present us. 

That shows that it is not the day that was good or bad. It was what we were comparing to that was making it basic or good. 

Our standards define how we look at things. What you decide is great or pathetic will dictate how you see other things. 

So it really depends upon you – How high do you want to keep your standards?