Drifting Through Unfamiliarity

My husband and I had made a few decisions that led us to shift to the capital city of India, Delhi, leaving behind my five-year stint at the economic capital, Mumbai. I had never wanted to live in Delhi. Hailing from outside of North India, my idea of the city was of course biased by the media. The city was therefore a circumstantial choice and not an individual preference. Albeit, I was excited to move here because the process that led to this shift — thrilling experiences of sneaking away from home to spend time with my boyfriend (now my husband), search for a house here with him, buying household products and along with the anticipated excitement about the (unknown) post-wedding lifestyles — made me want to give a genuine attempt to live in this notorious capital city.

I had no expectations about my post-wedding lifestyle either, mostly because I did not know what to expect. I draw blank visuals when I think about my desires of living together with a partner. And more blankness about a life in this city. I have had scattered official experiences in Delhi: joyous metro rides, unsafe street crawls at evening, yummy food everywhere (even in Gurgaon) and gigantic magnificent museums. Yet, they did nothing to feed my expectations. In a way it was good. I understood the capital city on the go: I learnt to handle the numbing winter where you have to layer up more inside of the home than when outside, learnt to converse in rude tones, which is the normal here, started enjoying the bird visitors on our terrace (including peacocks!) and the walks in green parks, etc. And of course, unbiased now, it is true that freedom is often traded off with decisions that ensure safety.

I drifted through this unfamiliarity of the place by drawing decisions from the contingencies of the present, without any past-future comparison. And my lack of expectations allowed for each experience to be novel, which buttressed my discomforting unfamiliarity with freshness.

But this was not the case when I shifted to a new workplace a month ago. It was my first studio experience. There I was on my first day, with my bells on, only to unexpectedly travel through a serial number of days with disconcerting thoughts and activities. I lingered, meandered and fluttered through the unfamiliarity, trying to make sense of this novel and unpleasant experience. Unfortunately I did not have the traditional tools that aid one to transition this phase. The tools being, induction and orientation. So there I was, unbeknownst to me, setting foot on an unfamiliar journey with a baggage of expectations set by the discussed contract.

Based on my discussions during recruitment, I had a set of expectations from the people of the company and I had assumed their expectations of me based on the role that I was appointed for. This concoction of expectations set a bitter taste. But it is gone now. A few conversations which I had bounced off with the right people helped me changeover to the other side of that unpleasant unfamiliarity. I have now managed to strikethrough my assumptions and expectations and started experiencing the present, unlike earlier when I was trying to alter my experience to align with my expectations.

Change is sometimes difficult to comprehend, and so it becomes difficult to embrace. My recent revelation is that the underlying premise of any change involves transitioning from familiarity to unfamiliarity. There are many reasons for our resistance to this transition:

• Like in my case, we might be hallucinating in our own perceptions and expectations that disallow positive attributions of that change to influence us, or
• we might fear the unknown or
• just do not want to deal with the uncertainties on the other side, or
• as in most cases, we might be biased by our status quo.

Whatever may be our reason for resistance, journeying through this transition is inevitable. It may be that the systemic interventions to aid us in this journey of change could be absent or insufficient. In which case, it is our responsibility to seek the aid for our own good. For, petty bickering, complaining and outright avoidance and quitting might shunt progress. It will thus keep us stuck in our unpleasant and now familiar circumstance forever, till we ourselves initiate to change.

Originally published at beingsocial89.blogspot.com on March 23, 2018.