Self Shelf

 

Introspection, putting yourself on the table and examining is what is the need of the hour at times. How do we introspect? Can we trust ourselves to be true judge of self? How can we remove any biases and preoccupation about self in judging our own activities?

Let’s take an example. Suppose we like any trait of character more over other such as if one values loyalty more over fairness and justice, he is less likely to whistle blow and go against his company than one who values justice more than loyalty.

Thus, there will always remain subjectivity to some extent depending upon the centrality of different values in our value system. But the same preoccupation and biases would remain when others judge us. It is true that when others judge you, it is their character that is reflected in the judgement. The subjectivity remains. The question remains then how can we introspect ourselves.

We can not be cent percent unbiased introspectors. What we can do is to minimize the prejudices. One theory given by John Rawl’s can be amended to help ourselves in introspection. The “Veil of Ignorance” concept in which we do not know our position or status can be used. In any situation or evaluation of steps taken by us, we should put ourselves in place of all the stakeholder. If every or most of the stakeholder considers the steps taken as rational and appropriate, we can conclude that we were right at that place.

So, when we put ourselves to the shelf to evaluate, we should keep in mind the preoccupation and prejudices. Also, we need not be very tough on the “Self”. We should put some minutes daily to introspect our days tasks to make a better Self.

To be continued..

Thanks for reading.

Year of No Resolutions-2017

Happy New Year 2017 to all.

The Year 2016 has ended and the public, as usual, welcomed 2017 with open arms and all the hope they could have probably garnered. During the last few days of 2016, the people started contemplating the things they would do in the coming year. They year 2016 must have felt neglected. It must have remembered its beginning and the way it has treated 2015. It must have regretted the doctrine of karma.

One thing is constant in nature and that is Change. So the demise of 2016 and advent of 2017 was a fix. People have always worshiped the rising sun and neglected the setting sun. This led to a underrated farewell of 2016. We can say that it reaped what it sowed, but this tradition has continued for so long now. To blame the Year for this would be naive, rather it can help us understand an important aspect of human behaviour.

We usually tend to give more importance to what is coming than what there is. We like to procrastinate things. We let bygones be bygones. This attitude makes us welcome the future and under-utilize the present. We make resolutions for new year at the expense of what we could and should start any morning. This is the reason why most people can not realize their new year resolution and it become a cyclic feature to make resolution every year to not complete it.

2016 would have been a mixed bag for most, terrible for few and awesome for some. But one thing would have been common for all- the Lessons.

I, too, learnt a few important things. I learnt the true meaning of child is the father of man. I learnt the importance of small talks and how they can be all you need at times. I learnt that love can last longer than life. I learnt that resolutions started on new years are over-hyped and the daily resolutions have better chances of being realized. I learnt that we should be ready to welcome any opportunity if and when it knocks.

That is why, we should welcome 2017 with open mind and flexibility than a strict new year resolution and declare it as Year of No Resolutions. We should Take a day as it comes and let us venture into unknown frontiers than limiting ourselves in known boundaries of resolutions.

Dear Zindagi…

 

Dear Zindagi,

A very welcoming Hello to you. I have been missing you lately and to rekindle our love I am writing this to you. A note to others- This post has nothing to do with the movie Dear Zindagi. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.

Dear Zindagi, you come in so many colours, so many shades and so many flavours. You come as the happiness in the innocent smiles of childhood. You present yourself in the adventures of class “X” untold love stories. You are the intricacies of the youth deciding to become something in life and earn a livelihood. You come as responsibilities we carry of family and friends. You come as strength, weakness, fear, and love. You are together with us till death do part us.

You came as easy as it can be in the beginning in my life. A vibrant environment, loving parents, adorable siblings, interesting friends and all other things define my childhood. I feel privileged for those astounding moments. A big Thank you for all those.

As I grew up and with time I also started aspiring for success and to become a better person in life in every aspect like education, extracurricular activities, acting, manners etc. I started working hard and got results too. College went well. After that I tried to become what I wanted from the very beginning. This is the time I thought I lost touch with Zindagi.

Times have been tough lately. Losing my identity, and losing a few friends have made me realize something. It is that our approach to life is too shallow. I made a few subtle changes that leads to better understanding of situations and Zindagi.

An ideal approach to life would definitely be to take things as it comes and get a closure with the past mistakes. I really appreciate stoicism for two things- it’s non-complaining attitude and the endurance it inculcates in us. Everyone has a few expectations and a few regrets in life. One important lesson is to do what you can do and don’t worry about what you can not do. We can influence only the things that are in our control. Somethings would be eventually be out of our control. Accept a few things and change a few.

Dear Zindagi is a continuous process. Some period are dark, but there is a blessing in disguise. The strength we get through these gives us strength to remain calm in difficult situations. Having a divine peace inside and calmness is important for taking informed decisions. To enjoy Dear Zindagi in all its favours is the key to have a peaceful life. Welcome happiness in its true form as well as tackle tough times in its entirety.

Dear Zindagi, though I would like to change a few things from past(as I do not want to get closure with a few things, don’t know whether I can get it or not), I really appreciate you for all the colours that you have filled my life with. You have given me strength to cope with the complexities that I may have to face in later stages. The thought of losing touch with you was ill-founded and I misinterpreted a tough phase with something other than life, but now I realize the cloak-and-dagger game that you like to play so much. It’s a challenging game, but I would now be more appreciative to small but important things.

Thanks for being with me always and hope to keep this friendship forever.

Love, Dear Zindagi.

 

 

Resist Fear, Assist Love

Love is amazing. It should be our duty to assist and spread love. Ideally love should automatically prevail in the air if we are with our loved ones, the people we care about. Though there may be temporary disruptions, things should get in equilibrium as the time passes. The present materialistic society has made it difficult for love to grow by itself. A child sees the love of his parent in the gifts he gets instead of the efforts the parent are putting in his development. Similar is the case with other relations. This artificial nature of love has been a constraint for unfurling of happiness across the horizon.

Fear is unsettling. We can have problems and pain in life. But Fear of these problems creates a circumstance that inhibits our ability. For example, even if we have prepared very well for an examination, sometimes at the end we may have a feeling to skip the examination. Feeling of nervousness is normal and most of people feel that. But to let that feeling take over our body and mind is fear. At that point we need to resist and block fear and go and give our best.

Here we clearly need to distinguish between discomfort and fear. Discomfort and downs are a part and parcel of life. If there are peaks in life, there will be some troughs. The most important thing with fear is that it is in most cases irrational and an invent of mind. Even if it is not imaginary, it will be an amplified version of reality.

Fear should be fended off with all the strength we can gather. It is a termite that weakens us from inside. It eats us from inside. We feel empty and sad. The thing is that we should be aware of the difficulty of the situation. We should not make-pretend a difficult situation easier as it would come back to bite us. But we should not let it fear us. we should remember that “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”. So either you win in this case or you learn to win next time.

But if it were this easier, haven’t we all had it all already. Things don’t work equally for everyone. Some have it easy, some have an uphill task. the good thing is that there are other ways to handle fear.

We know that what we resist persists and what we embrace dissolves. We can accept our fears as they are. This would stop the growth spiral of the fear. We can accept that we might have to live with the ghost in the attic and it may cause us some pain. But we would not let it impact our other activities. Even if we are not well prepared, we would do all we could and give our best.

Love is another very important tool to take fear out. Surrounding ourselves around loved ones and seeking their help could help us in eliminating fear. In the Harry Potter movie, to tackle fear of Death Eaters, it was suggested to imagine the most loved and happy situations. But love is the feeling some people are most afraid of. They need to get over this first. Don’t let few instances to shape things for rest of life. Experiencing different things will clear things up. Live Life with Love.

So, we should either resist or accept fear and spread love to make our and others life enjoyable and Hey! Merry Christmas!

Credits : https://malhotrami.wordpress.com/

Life is What You Make it.

Life is synonymous with ups and downs. If you don’t go through a phase of change, you are not living life. Even a rock goes through a cycle- erosion, transportation, sedimentation, and lithification. “Life is What You Make it” is a novel by Preeti Senoy that I read recently. It is about a girl who has gone through a series of ups and downs of life and managed to come out from a complex situation.

The novel has a dual message – One about the awareness about mental health and other about the fragile nature of life. The lead character Ankita who had a photographic memory suffers from Bipolar Disorder. The novel also indirectly justifies that suicide should be considered as a disease and it should be treated at the earliest.

The unpredictable nature of life makes it very important that we live in the present. Take a day at a time and live it to fullest. This does not mean we do not plan for future. We should have a plan which we should strive hard to achieve. But we need to divide task in daily routine which should constitute of not only of our goal but also of all other important activity such as exercise, hobbies, family etc.

At some point in life, there might come an impulsive change that might deviate us from our goal. The attachment and ambition to achieve the goal might leave us in a precarious state of mind. But we need to learn to accept the changes. Even if it is not possible to accept the changes, we need to learn to live till the time when the changes can to altered.

We always have a choice. The choices we make in life makes us what we are in life. So decision making becomes the most important topic which should be inculcated in us from the very beginning. Controlled -Stimulated-Thinking should be developed from childhood.

Some thoughts/ideas are very toxic that can inhibit us from independent thinking. They make a spiral where other important things are dumped. We become the doom of ourselves. We need help of others in these situations and should consult friend, family etc.

The bottom line is that life can be very unpredictable and our responses should vary according to the need of time. Sometimes we should aim for the clouds and sometimes we should aim to settle and pull ourselves from the abyssal plains.

The Gandhi who Lived – I.

 

Father of a nation, Inspiration for Humanity.

Prosperity comes, and so does problems. The simultaneous existence of the two, defines the present world. Every single moment we live, we go through an ethical dilemma, the dilemma to choose between “right” and “wrong”, the dilemma “to do” or “not to do”. We are fast tracking on the path of development and at the same time inviting the plethora of problems associated with the development. It was a time, the nature was the master, the controller, the destroyer. Now is the time, the nature is the slave, the controlled, the destroyed. “Everyone meets the Waterloo at last”. what was reaped in the past, what would be reaped in the future, is all a matter of time and space which may change in any dimension.

The problem started taking ground, when the so called most intellectual beings made their presence on the earth. The beginning of a vicious circle of survival had begun. Man hates man, man corrupts man and the never ending uncontrolled reaction instigates. Breaking the clutches of this reaction is the need of the hour. Today we have started taking nature in our hands and have led to the corruption in the climate itself which is all important for breeding life.

In such hapless conditions, the mind tries to reclaim some optimism from the greatest of personalities who have guided our civilizations since time immemorial. Being a native of this proud nation, the first person that clicks my mind is MG Gandhi.

How was the honoured man able to deal the problems prevalent then? What would have been his approach to tackle the problems we face today? Is there a possibility to make a man with a Gandhian mind-set or is it even possible to get another Gandhi?  If the circumstances make person who he is, are the circumstances any less critical than were at those times? Or is it just that the perspective of the problems –pervasive terrorism, the nation state boundaries, climate change and some others, is so camouflaged that it has deceived us all. It feels like the most intellectual beings with the most evolved minds have shut their minds to see the reality. And the reality is undeniable with the doom days waiting for us.

My whole attempt was centred on the revival of the little Gandhi who resides in each one of us. The guiding light within all of us which would take us away from the doom days and move on the path of humanity.

While I end here, I feel nostalgic thinking about the “Tryst with Destiny” speech of Nehru and wonder what would have been the form and impact if Gandhi had delivered it from the field of Noakhali where he was to pacify the rioting population. What difference had it created? What impact had it on the future path chosen by the country? To be continued…………

 

 

Why does an Apple fall from a Tree?

Apple, not an iPhone.

Apple has fascinated humans since a long time back. From Adam and Eve story to the famous story of Sir Issac Newton. We know the Newtonian explanation of why an apple falls down the tree. Let’s again ask ourselves The Question. See if we can think something good.

Social Science and Natural Science are different. Progress in Social Science is always slow and there is no one rule that fits all situation. Social Science always has been a tough child. We may say that apple falls down to feed people. It falls down to fulfill its utility.

Thinking about the species development, an apple falls down to increase the number of its species. The seeds resting inside an apple needs soil, moisture etc. to develop into a tree. So an apple falls down to procreate just like people have sex to have a kid.

In our early childhood, we are told that an apple falls down due to gravitational force towards the center of Earth. We are also told the famous anecdotes of Newton sitting in the garden. We do not think anything otherwise and consider Sir Newton’s answer as the sole answer to the question. It might be one of the biggest drawback of our schooling system. We are transformed into a line follower robot unable to come up with anything new on our own.

What is Right?

Everyone wants to do something. Something that makes us happy and makes the world a better place to live. We are judged every now and then. Our conduct is under constant investigation, by our conscience or by the society. In this context it is important that we should do things that are ethically and morally correct. It will make things simple.

It is much easier said than done. Many times the rightness or wrongness of an act can be surely known after it is finished. Many things may be right in one perspective and wrong in others. The subjectivity of the morality makes the whole exercise very sophisticated.

I am going to discuss some ideas to decide the rightness or wrongness of an act below.

What I want to ask first is – was everything at the beginning of life was ethicallly correct? Is corruption an aberration or is is natural? Are humans the most corrupted species? The answers of these questions would make this exercise much easier. But there is no sure way to know the answers of these questions. We can at most try to guess the answers.

At the beginning, the single cell organisms can not be associated with corrupt practices. Tree to have very little choice to be ethically incorrect. Trees compete with each other for growing. But in no case one tree bribes other or kills other intentionally. So we can consider trees as being morally upright.

So we might say that unethical practices are a result of evolution. Who was the first human to tell a lie and why did he do that? How this trait became a part of his genetics that it propagated and evolved further? We might think of the situation in which due to scarcity of food someone might have lied to have food for himself. Thus, he would have survived and the quality to lie spread from him.

Work in progress….