Option: a thing that is or may be chosen
Privilege: a special right, advantage available only to a particular person or group
Choice: an act of choosing between two or more possibilities
Photo by Marlon Trottmann from Pexels
Being a digital nomad is the latest hipsteria (yup, made that word up! Wordplay is also trending...LOL). In a pre-social media age, hipsters were a minority of people who followed ‘non-traditional’ trends and were considered outsiders to the cultural mainstream. Today with the instant awakening that happens (Instagram it is!), hipsteria IS ‘cultural mainstream'.Options available, ideologies propagated, choices amplified! Instantly and Frequently!
Amidst all the chaos and paranoia, let’s look at what the year of COVID threw at us as options to choose from:
Commuting to work or remote working: Do I stay put in a city with real estate investment that weighs me down or do I move to a quieter remote place with the only requirement being great broadband speeds?
Work- Life balance or Life-Work balance: The chronology is immaterial but I can choose to build life around work or work around building my life.
Time or Productivity: Sitting for designated hours at the office or working from a remote place with productive output as my KPI.
Remote Working, Remote Studying, Remote Living; remote definitely reeks of Hipsteria!
Despite these enticing options, people connect is important and many will opt for work from office or stay in a melting pot like Mumbai or NY though the common belief is that they don’t add value to quality of life.
But that is exactly what choice is and choice is not a trend! It's the journey between ‘I don’t know what to choose’, ‘I had no choice’ and ‘I chose’.
A product of our experiences, conditioning and relationships, our choices seem to be wound to our beliefs. However, Choice shouldn’t be a burden.
Beliefs shouldn’t be rigid. Fluidity shouldn’t be confused with…. “Confusion”
Choice to me is the ability for a person to choose one over the other without trying to be hipsterish or being tightly hinged on conditioned belief systems.
People who make choices should accept that it’s ok to be fluid in them. It is ok to be in a space where you would like to be around lot of people socially and then one fine day want complete detachment while u finish your work from a beach or hilltop.
Along the path of the choice we make, we might realise that our choices might have effects we never thought of. Like some of the post COVID choices may disturb a lot of economic models that countries run on. Inequality in education will be glaringly visible when some of us choose remote learning without bothering if kids in rural and under privileged sections of the society can afford online education. Choices will amplify our privileges more than ever. Making choices without privilege sounds fairly utopian; (we all know most options I talk of here is highly prized privilege) and having no choices is certainly dystopian; so then, what is the paradox of choice?
We are in the midst of an era where choices are creating hybrid and fluid environments in workplaces, gender identities, communities and other areas of life. So then, shouldn’t multi hyphenated ideologies exist too? A space where it is ok for us to exist in free spirited and self-value-based Individualism.
Instead of ‘Extreme Individualism’ which could be a probable result of our new-found choices, could we look at Collective Individualism that is system based? Collective Individualism that looks out for the common good avoiding the vicious loop of beliefs leading to choices and vice versa.
Choice is freedom; and freedom exists in a sustainable world. Probably Collective Individualism can usher humanity into a new era, which might have a complex network of choices and beliefs, but will enable free spiritedness while working constructively together for a better future for all.
Collective Individualism, oh wait, is it another Hipsteria ?
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