A Soulful Standard of Living for the Indian Professional
By AnSiAndYou™ | Sacred in the Ordinary
Lucknow. 8:47 a.m.
The metro rattles forward. A young man stands by the door, earbuds in, fingers swiping mechanically through reels, CVs, memes, job alerts. All windows open — LinkedIn, WhatsApp, anxiety. He’s dressed sharp. Hair gelled. Dreams folded inside a leather laptop bag. But his eyes?
Somewhere else entirely.
He isn’t late. But something is missing. Something not urgent… but deeply important.
We call it “standard of living” — this idea that we’re progressing, evolving, becoming “somebody.”
We measure it with gadgets, cities, digits on our CTC. But here’s a question we rarely ask:
What if you’ve upgraded everything except yourself?
Steering Through the Commute
Every morning, millions of Indians move. To tech parks. To call centers. To Zoom meetings. We move so much that we forget to ask:
Am I steering my life — or am I just sitting in the backseat, hoping the company, society, or fate takes me somewhere good?
Movement is not the same as meaning. Productivity is not the same as presence.
And commuting, in all its forms — metro rides, algorithmic scrolling, rushing to keep up — can become a trance. A numbing, exhausting trance.
Until one day, something quiet inside us whispers:
“There’s a calling beneath all this noise.”
The Calling: A Forgotten Frequency
You remember it in strange moments:
While folding your bedsheet, your mind wanders to the novel you never read..
At a chai stall, a stranger says something that feels like a message.
After your client call, you stare at the blank Google Doc and wonder, “Is this really it?”
The calling isn’t always grand. It doesn’t always promise a 10x return or a personal brand with 50k followers.
Sometimes, it’s just this:
A quiet longing to live a life that makes sense to your soul.
Steering vs. Drifting
Drifting
Steering
Wake up reactive
Start your day with intention
Take every project to “stay relevant”
Choose what aligns, not just what pays
Consume 100 voices online
Listen to your one inner voice
Wait for luck
Build with quiet discipline
Survive the week
Savor the work
Steering doesn’t mean quitting your job today. It means beginning to participate — in your own life.
It means asking:
“What am I saying yes to? What am I slowly abandoning? And what would it look like to steer with soul?”
A New Metric for a Better Life
Let’s stop defining “standard of living” by income alone.
Let’s ask:
Do I feel whole at the end of the day?
Do I remember what excites me — not just what exhausts me?
Can I imagine a life where I’m not just performing, but participating?
Because here’s a secret they never taught us in school:
Your calling isn’t something you find. It’s something you answer. One breath, one brave yes, one ordinary morning at a time.
A Gentle Practice: From Commute to Calling
This week, try this on your next commute (or tea break):
Silence the noise — one stop without music, no scrolling.
Listen inward — What keeps nudging your spirit?
Write one small step — a call, a course, a sabbatical, a shift.
Then ask yourself:
“What would a life led by this voice feel like?”
Even if you’re not ready to leap — you are ready to listen.
