Obscurity of the far sight..

I remember reading it somewhere, 'An atheist is like a person who is all dressed up but doesn't know where to go'. Being a theist with a somewhat different and customized definition of God, I though use this quote once a while to mock at atheists but the truth is, it seems, that not just an atheist, we all are dressed up, rather perpetually dressing up without any realization of where to go or where we are going. It is scary when realized but we do not have any idea of what's going to happen next. But come to think of it, there wouldn’t be any thrill or fun in life if we knew about future. All fun lies in not expecting (does not mean not hoping) anything because if you expect everything to be good, you won’t be as happy at everything being good as you would’ve been if you didn’t expect everything to be good. 

            Today, i am slightly free all of a sudden, moot memorial submitted - something that took a few nights' sleep and on a positive note, drowned me into work to not bother any other stuff. I feel good thinking about it, wish as if the same enthusiastic focus and drive continues with everything. But to try and look at the larger picture, i feel myopic, almost as if there is no end to what i am trying to vision. I feel very scarily aimless or rather unsure about the aims and objectives to be achieved. I try finding out the preamble to the Act of life, infinite as the long title of this Act is, I try using the doctrine of pith and substance to get the intent of the Creator while enacting the Act of life. And I end up conceding to the point of nothingness. It's just like the opening words of the song 'boulevard of broken dreams' which goes.."I walk a lonely road, the only one that i have ever known.. don't know where it goes but it's only me and i walk alone.."

            Doing anything honestly and earnestly without the concern for the ends or the results is what i perceive as living in depth and to the core. We all know what things might probably end up in but we don't realize our purpose of doing them or rather the purpose of our purpose of doing them. We just keep living without realizing where we are heading to. That's why it's best many a times to just follow carpe diem and let the time take its own course. However, many a times we feel like defying the time from taking its own course but that's how time takes its own course and makes us strive to defy it. So often we lose patience and start craving for recognition, achievements, superficial superiority and give in to competition. This again as usual, makes me conclude at striking a balance between the active approach and patience.

Talking about the place of recent realizations for me, i do concede to the fact that this place can depress people very easily and has a strange sadistic romanticism where people (barring a few exceptions) know where they are going wrong and why they don't like the place, still keep enjoying the dissatisfied feeling and the rock bottom energy levels. But afterall it depends on how you want the place to treat you. Everything in life is quid pro quo. And after moaning about theamount of work we have in such a place, I now do not wish to have free time here, I just don't want not to be busy. 

            Anyway, with the resort of such postings, I try to reflect how disastrous it becomes when I get free and write down all such crap. Now that I have realized the futility of concerning the myopic eye which fails to look at the far-off (not larger) picture, I again try infusing carpe diem but no, how can I seize the day? it is night right now! The only way I can do that is by dreaming of it in my sleep till a 'day' actually starts which can be seized.. (I hope the literal meaning of these sentences would be the last to come to mind in presence of a strong and beautiful latent implied meaning..). 

Mistake...

Everything in life is relative. Anything is good just because it is not bad and if there wasn’t anything bad, there wouldn’t have been anything good. This probably seems to be the idea on which all optimists thrive. Similarly, mistake is that relative which keeps the element of prudence alive in this world. It in fact goes ahead of the good-bad relation and not only keeps prudence in existence, but also promotes it. Mistake is an act that is one of the main sources of learning and experience. Still mistake is one thing everyone wants to avoid. Why? Probably because mistake leads you to where you don’t want to be, but again, unless you come to such a situation where you don’t want to be, you never realize where you want to be.

            The essence of mistakes lies in the fact that the one who commits it never realizes while committing it that he is committing a mistake and the realization is possible only when the mistake is committed and looked upon by the same person through a neutral eye. Quite often if we look back into the past, we can’t help but laugh at our follies, at our thoughts and actions over such trivial matters which seemed to be the entire world while the commission of mistake. Probably I am talking mostly about a stereotyped notion of mistake but that is what is in my mind right now. Realization of mistake, however, is just the first step towards redemption.

            Jamming of thought process, too much of expectations, a fragile emotional structure, loss of hope, depression and being sucked in by the Murphy’s law are often the symptoms and facilitating factors of a mistake. A low score in a trivial test, an exaggerated and over-sensitive hurt of ego by a mere insignificant act - these all seem to be as big as the entire world and obviously you don’t realize the mistake simply because it is being committed. But on passage of time, when things of much more relevance, gravity and importance start bothering you, you will definitely laugh at such mistakes whenever looked back upon.

            The secret, according to me, lies in analysing any such situation with a mechanical view devoid of all ‘practical’ considerations of emotion and bias. Sometimes I wish we could be just machines with a thought process. That would make us enjoy all the benefits one could get from mistakes without actually undergoing the effects or rather the symptoms of mistakes. But again, we all are humans after all and what life will that be without mistakes, without the learning through realization of prudence as against superficial learning. Without mistakes, we would miss out on the unparalleled joy that we get on overcoming mistakes and by proving wrong the sadistic side of ours.

            Even life is nothing but about improvements and improvements are not possible without downfalls. Gravity makes everything that goes up come down but it doesn’t lift them up again. Things need to be forced against the gravity to overcome it in order to rise and this analogous force is nothing but the constant struggle to realize, overcome and ensure the non-commission of mistakes committed. So let us be energetic, rational, self controlled, thoughtful and learn to strike a balance; let us be an alchemist and turn the base mistakes into golden assets of experience and prudence.

Random Thoughts

'Humans are social animals'. A very preliminary notion which is imbibed in children in early classes in schools and more often than not just learnt by them. There is a very inherent sense of virtue in the innocence of children, the basic teachings given to them which I feel when looked back upon, no matter however much you have grown up, helps in making life simple, chilled and conscience-controlled. The more you grow up with a threshold sense of such childish virtue, balancing maturity with it, the more maturity exists in deepest of realities. Today I feel pretty much the same, wondering about human nature, basic instincts and reflecting back upon such imbibed thoughts which were not wondered upon when imbibed.

There was a bee hive formed on the second floor of our hostel yesterday, quite close to my room. Immediately there were diverse reactions observed, with almost everyone being concerned about the rather incredibly rapid development and foreseeable consequences, some getting scared, some getting pissed and some even admiring the brilliance of the hard working bees! There was visible the variety of instincts among different people. Anyway, the unanimous agreement (with an exception) was to solve the problem and somehow get rid of the hive, the only way seen visible as to burn the hive. After few unsuccessful attempts with petrol yesterday, the hive was cleared off today with an insecticide sprayed over the bees killing them all. All said and done, it was said that 'practical conditions demanded the action' and obviously anyone objecting it on the basis of emotional arguments would be a subject of mockery. What value does anything hold which has no relevance in practice? But the confusion being the determination of practicality. Subjectivity is inevitable even in determination of practicality. The dead bees now lay scattered in a sticky and messy honey-filled heath throughout our second floor, the hive vanished for no fault on their part, just that they seemed to be a 'practical threat' and inconvenience to us. 

Human behaviour clearly portrays the 'animal' part of us being socially so. There exists nothing above self interest and a mere threat to it or a subjective foresight of intrusion can lead people to the extremes of being defensive. This is where I feel the demarcation of strong and weak lies. The more defensive a person is to the so-considered-to-be intrusions or the more vulnerable (s)he feels, the more defensive (s)he becomes and the more (s)he bothers and reacts. This sometimes even results in aggressive approaches which I consider as the end point of defense i.e. the person becomes so weak and gives up on every other way and directly jumps to the ultimate defence - aggression. This is where practicality comes up as the alibi of the weak and justifies or rather portrays the weak as the strong, the not-to-mess-with kinds, the ones strong personality. Any problem if looked at without the inherent and inevitable fear of consequential loss of self interest, rationally and strongly, would not appear as a problem at all. This is the case where people get along with almost everything. Our inertia of rest makes us resist changes but once stabilized with the change we resist changes to such change. And such is the law of nature - 'nothing is permanent'. Life remains as nothing but the survival of the fittest, the strong and fearless, just that the traits of being fit, strong and fearless need to be understood and identified.

Another such trait protected by the 'overrated practicality' seems to be the abstract noun called as 'ego'. Inevitable as it seems, like every other existing observable thing in this world, it is best when kept at a balance, balance with the lack of ego. The harm principle appears to be the best ever thing in the world with respect to 'ego'. Ego is worst when it operates to the detriment of others but to some extent it is necessary to counter the 'overrated practicality' to survive. Ego often drives people to disrespect others and lack of it makes others walk over and use them. Excess of it creates differences among the best of friends and creates vacuum and lack of communication. Ego coupled with expectations arising from people create all the tensions and problems within close companions and subsequent 'communalism' just fans the fake fire, making it real. Anyway, the conclusive point being that it seldom feels sad observing the prevalence of supremacy of self interest over every other thing despite consequences of all kinds. It again comes to the basic question of normative structure of conscience - subjectivity in deciding the good and bad. However, the priority which i choose is a balance of metaphysical and practical. Practicality is not a vice in itself but when overrated to include a perverted sense of it to justify whatever the apparently and superficially powerful thinks practicality to be and one of the vices of such overrated practicality being that it makes people live in superficiality and they totally ignorant of the deep and actual state of affairs restrict their world merely to whatever exists in superficiality, to whatever is physically observable.

It seems that it is all about the time, tests, moot, exaggerated social life and the very many aspects of a 'professional college' that generate such thoughts, analysis and blog posts notwithstanding the immense workload, pausity of time and the perpetual tag of 'pending'. Probably I have been influenced by observing the application of diplomacy among people and the uncomparable concern for the overrating of 'compartmentalization and practicality' shown by people saving the world!