Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Philosophy of Life - 1


I am starting a series called “The philosophy of life” wherein I would pen down some of the aspects/events of life that are inevitable and aim at imparting a lesson to those who are ready to learn from the bitter/sweet realities in their journey from womb to the tomb. One of the aspect that has recently propelled me to share is centered on the importance we give to various people we meet in this journey.

Right from birth an infant comes across different people. Some have a profound effect on his personality and some just come and go without making a considerable impact on him. As a result of this direct or indirect interaction with people, he inculcates few of the things and that becomes a part of his personality and stay with him all through his life. Now when I say that the interaction has an impact on the personality of the person it is quite evident that he must have given high importance to that person and as a result he has borrowed something from him in the process. But when I look at this process from the perspective of the other person, the story of life seems to be a bit ironical. There also exist people who give a lot of importance to us (infant) but most of us don’t realize it and tend to ignore what the person has done to us. And these are the people who are least valued. We simply act/feel indifferent to most of his behavior. And this is not something that is very specific to Ram or Shyam. It happens to most of us. And when I say most of us, it means I am talking of the majority. One of the best examples I can give is that of parents. Parents, especially in India, do everything for us but how many times do we stop and think seriously about them or about what they have done to us. Some people would reject my argument saying that it is their duty to do that. I’ll half-heartedly agree with them but we can always thank them in a way that would make them special and make them realize that they hold a special place in our life.

This is just one example. It may be applicable to many others, be it friends, strangers, who has had tried to give a new meaning to our life. Simple ignoring them would simply be being selfish on our part. We must try to understand that in a world comprising selfish and self-centered creatures if someone is taking pains we must thank them. And thanking them doesn’t merely mean saying thank you and some of these things can’t be taught. People just run for bigger things without even knowing that those bigger things are the ones that are the most difficult to possess. And in the process we ignore the importance attached to the smaller things which are easy to get. It is well said that we attach less value to the war which is easily won. And unfortunately that is what the human nature is all about.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Old Habits Die Hard



After a long wait I finally decided to write something again. There have been lot of issues that are urging me to pen my thoughts down but I am choosing to write on something that introduces a more philosophical touch to my thoughts. Thanks to my good observation ability that I have begun to realize that habits die hard.

Now first of all how do we define Habits? Habits are actions that progress from our consciousness to unconsciousness and that is probably the reason why they die hard. Because we are hardly aware of those actions that we begin to feel comfortable. We know that the laws of physics state that every entity in this universe tries to attain a state of maximum equilibrium and minimum energy, so this partly explains most of the things. Whenever an individual tries or even thinks of trying for a change, upheaval is caused inside the individual. Obviously who would think himself of trying to unsettle himself even when the change is for something good? What people don’t realize is that after disequilibrium, a state of calmness prevails. We just try to see the things superficially and not think of what lies beyond and often go wrong in interpreting most of the life situations – All that glitters is of course not gold. Bringing about a change is something getting out from the comfortable shoes that we have been wearing for many years and switching to the new ones which of course pinch at first. We try to distinguish between comfort and boredom without realizing they are the two sides of the same coin. It is said that bringing about change in oneself is easier than to bring it in the other but I beg to differ because it is equally difficult to change ourselves. To bring about a change in oneself you need to first repudiate your mind set because you just can’t simply say that what I have been doing or thinking for so many years is faulty and believing that we are infallible creatures. To question ourselves would mean to question our identity and that becomes impossible when we have already formed our identity.

A very valid question crops up that ‘Is the change really required?’ I really don’t have the potency to answer it because this is something person specific. Not many individuals would accept that they are not living their life as per their expectations. We need to first identify our expectations and that is something which goes all through our life i.e, to know ourselves fully. We find all kinds of people – those who think a time to change is due even when everything is going fine and as expected because life hardly follows the same and those who think that nothing is going as expected. Miserable are those who lie in between. But we must understand that change is the law of nature. It is an inevitable part of our life. The moment we try to question our ability to change or resist change, we hold ourselves responsible for our sluggish future. In the process we forget that “After a storm comes calm”.