The Un-Common Sense
Understanding human behavior is a never-ending task, a quest to know the how what, and why behind a person’s everyday choices and mannerisms. It is easy to categorize someone who behaves differently as ignorant or wrong. Today’s world requires a more refined thought process to understand why and what do you really value a person for.
Thinking about which, our behavior comes from a combination of heredity and environment. Whether it is relationships, habits, money, beliefs, food or power, how you behave with each of them as an adult, has a lot to do with what you have seen and experienced growing up. Many of you reading this might agree, a lot of times we’re in awe of how a village child behaves as compared to a city child in diverse situations or even in day-to-day lives. Even before we’re born, the foundations for the behavioral patterns we exhibit in adulthood have been laid. And not only do we inherit traits from our own parents but also from their parents — in varying degrees. We learn and develop from the environment around us in multiple ways.
People from different generations, raised by different parents who earned different incomes and held different values, in different parts of the world, have had different degrees of luck, learn very different lessons.
Everyone has their own unique experience of how the world works. What seems crazy to you might make sense to me and what I call common sense being a thirty-something, might be very uncommon for today’s kids or even teenagers.
One of the simplest examples — Switching off a fan or light when not in use, not leaving the tap water running — was common sense for me while growing up. This, in fact, is rather common for a lot of people my age and older than me. The reason being similar generations and similar lifestyles if not similar values. For many, the reason for using the resources thoughtfully wasn’t due to their scarcity, but to ensure mindful spending.
The spending patterns in the last couple of decades have significantly increased. And subsequently, have the alleged bad habits. The amount spent on resources is nearly one-fourth of one’s monthly spend and therefore, not worthy of attention.
But, it is critical to highlight that these things are still of significance for the middle and lower-middle class. People make sure they do not end up over-using the resources as they wouldn’t want to upsurge their personal expenses via the usage. Sometimes, the little satisfaction in saving our resources by using common sense is much more than the feeling of having the liberty to waste it. After all, it’s for us to decide what we’d want to live and leave as a legacy for the generations to come. The resources we call common today might be scarce in the years to come.
The reality of daily life is that we only try to fix those problems that are staring at us in the face. But the most useful and effective wisdom comes from common sense. It’s simplistic in nature, so obvious that once learned, you think, “How did I not figure this out before? Why did it take me so long?”
And if you still haven’t figured it, here’s a quick reminder:
- Making your bed everyday morning is correlated with having a more productive day.
- Don’t let food waste be a wasted opportunity.
- You never know the worth of water until the well runs dry.
- The more you waste electricity today, the darker your future will be tomorrow
- Plant a tree, so that the next generation can get air for free.
Also, this Father’s Day I’d like to thank my Father for gifting me this Un-Common but very useful sense for life :)
Nidhi
