‘Making do’ or the word ‘adjust’ does not necessarily bring about the warmest of emotions or the happiest of memories. Personally, to make it a little lighter, I look at every adjustment as a transition in my life. Instead of moving or altering your means of life in order to achieve something through limited resources which we call ‘adjusting’, why not think about it as leaving one phase that you were most comfortable in, to step into an upgraded phase of life, synonymous to ‘transition’. For instance, the whole school to college shift phenomenon.
I very vividly remember leaving home during the first week of June, last year.
I remember my mother telling me last summer how my life will change and how I will constantly be expected to make adjustments because it is going to be a transition. The fact that she used both these words that I have been talking about together made me a little more hopeful about this new phase. In psychology, they call this identification and rationalization but I would simplify it to finding your own comfort zones as you switch through different phases in life.
Adjustments do not come naturally. They take up a lot of your mental space and emotional energy because it is usually balancing conflict of needs. I was no exception to this process.
From being a bio science student, to dropping my dentistry seat to ‘deciding’ to take up a triple degree majors in English literature, Psychology and Journalism in a city 600 kilometres away from home, I’m still transitioning, slower than I thought.
The balancing conflict of needs still continues, rather intensifies with every passing day in a new city, with an absolutely new culture, a new lifestyle and the daily regime of seeing and meeting new faces.
On some days, I’m reminded of lines from Eliot’s poetry Prufrock where he writes,
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;”
And this is where I find myself at peace amidst this inner conflict of settling in a new place, this is where I find my comfort zone, in a completely new setting when I take time out for myself. The very fact that in this whole process of ‘making do’, you still manage to retain old parts of yourself and revive them, beautifies the word ‘adjust’ or the action of doing so, for me; which I think has a lot to do with me being hopeful and perceiving it as a transition.
While I have been a person who is very adaptive to change, there were a couple of ‘adjustments’ made in order to survive in this new city. To list a few, from seeing my parents every single day after school, now I see them once in two months. From my mother dropping me to school every day in a very peaceful traffic situation in Hyderabad, now I travel in crowded BMTC buses amidst the infamous Bangalore traffic every single day. From not bothering about normal chores such as laundry, making my bed etc to spending a weekend doing them.
Yes, these things sound very trivial but for an eighteen year old who is still figuring out how to be an adult, these adjustments become life lessons and that’s why I call them transitional changes, because personally, they have helped me grow as a person; they have helped to appreciate every single privilege that I have had or have in life.
While I write about people of my age leaving behind their comfort zones and making adjustments in a new atmosphere, let’s also put some light on a generation older to us, our parents who struggle to make adjustments in the same atmosphere, our homes, after we have left.
At a recent visit home, I noticed my mother had made a few changes in my room and when I asked her the reason behind it, she replied, “It looked very empty since the time you had left and I didn’t like it, maybe because I was so used to seeing it full of colours, poetry and pieces of art, this sudden emptiness created a desolation.”
I then realised that as I look at my adjustments as transitional changes to a new phase albeit at a slow pace, for her the pace was even slower since she kept going back to all the old memories of mine in order to move forward.
Moving ahead to something new, exciting and unexplored has always been fascinating but staying at the same place, watching a place you call ‘home’ emptying and still trying to move forward is unarguably a task.
The meaning of ‘adjust’ fits right in this scenario because it is a very literal process of moving or altering someone or something in order to achieve the desired result. Here, someone would be us, the children, something would be the changes made to fill in our absence; all done to lead a happy life while satisfying the balancing conflict of needs.
The biggest transitional change or adjustment that parents have to make when they become parents is realizing the need to put someone else before them. Now, when we leave, the hardest part about the empty nest is learning to put themselves first.
The cycle somehow comes to a full circle from putting themselves first, learning to put their children first and then going back to step one and that again beautifies the whole process of ‘making do’ for me.
“It doesn’t get better, you just get used to it.”
A phrase that I would put into context here since our parents learn to ‘make do’ in the absence of a part that belongs to them, us. Ironically, it makes them stronger with every passing day, teaching them lessons, helping them grow and that’s why I would call this a bitter-sweet balancing conflict of needs.
Moving on to a generation older to our parents, a generation that is in their mid 60’s or 70’s, our grandparents. The reason why I extend the timeline of generations till here is that I see a collision between the definitions of our ‘adjustments’ and theirs.
I remember my grandmother mentioning how she found it difficult to stay at home after my grandparents had to shut down a business that they had been doing for the past 30 years.
It takes 21 days for an action to transform into a habit they say and 30 years is nowhere close to this figure. The fact that most of our grandparents get so used to getting ready every morning and heading out for work for almost 3 decades and then suddenly one fine day, retire and are left clueless is also a process of ‘making do’. Making do without something that you have been doing for so long, adjusting to the feeling of waking up every morning and finding ways to pass time is also a transitional phase. Here, the pace is slower than our parents.
The difference between our ages has a lot to with the way we look at the phenomenon of ‘making do’, I as an eighteen year old perceive to be a transitional change, my mother as a balancing conflicts of needs in order to lead a happy life and as we reach my grandmother it is black and white, the word ‘adjust’ can’t be sugar coated.
Reminds me of Shakespeare’s famous poem, ‘The Seven Ages Of Man’ where he ends with the lines –
“The sixth age shifts,
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.”
The whole idea that you are now old and nothing like your former self comes with a lot of acceptance and adjustments. When you have influenced a generation, lived for close to a decade and suddenly feel all of that fading away, it is a whole new process of ‘making do’.
You learn to go back to being your own childish self, you re-discover your hobbies, you learn to do everything else but what you had been doing maybe because your age doesn’t allow that any longer. The balancing conflicts of needs is the most intense here since the slightest of changes seem like obstacles now. But there’s still learning, growth and transition.
To sum it all, every age and stage in life is a voyage in itself. A voyage with its own kind of emotions, desires, needs and perceptions. There’s a thin line between looking at the process of ‘making do’ as an adjustment or looking at it as a transitional phase that helps you grow, makes you stronger and competent for the upcoming stage in life. You can either choose to be a hopeful person and have faith in every growing step you take during the ‘making do’ phenomenon or sulk at it while you neglect the learning, the choice, my friend is yours.