As silence pervades the lonesome room that I inhabit now.... I am in a state of dilemma.... the sound of this clock, piercing through all the mind numbing silence and reaching me, is really over whelming.... I have always believed that I am the loneliest when I can hear the sound of this clock.... I try my best to drown it in the din of everyday life.... but the chime of time has to win eventually..... The second side of my dilemma is that although I loathe listening to this clock... I cant even wish for it to stop... If time stops now then how do I get to the morning?
It is said that life is full of choices...... even when you feel that you are left with no choice but to do something, you still have the choice of not doing it.... but there are times when these choices are just the options making up a dilemma.... for the uninitiated, Dilemma is a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives (thank you, dictionary.com... I owe you one more!).
What does one do in case of a dilemma?.... choose the milder poison and die an excruciating death or choose to take the quicker way to heaven (or hell, conditions apply)..... What choice is there when we are left with none?.... These are some of the questions we ask during a life time..... a life time in which, even before finding the answers, we overcome many dilemmas....
The classic example being me..... I am left to choose between hearing the noise of time or to get stuck in an eternity of silence.... and I am procrastinating by typing this blog...... a blog which is devoid of any purpose, rhyme or reason.... maybe its just a futile attempt to confuse the sound of time in the clanging of the keyboard.... Oh! the futility of mankind.... it takes a lifetime to accept the concept of death.... life would have been so easier otherwise....
The Deserve-Desire face-off
Life, eventually, is the time we spend while going from one plan to another... a plan of how we are going to live our lives..... and the purpose of this plan is, usually, to satiate our desires..... I'll not take the holier-than-thou high ground and say that I'm an odd one out.... I am not... even this act of typing out a blog is planned in order to vent out my views.... so that new ones might come in..... but I've realized that we tend to ignore a small detail in our quest to quench the desire..... Deserve.... Do we ever even give a thought to determine whether we actually deserve what we desire?
There is a chain of events which precedes and supersedes this..... Most often, we have no idea as to what we deserve.... Nor are we quite clear about what we desire (and if we desire it at all!).... But we try our best to achieve it, nonetheless.... if we fail; we lose hope, we despair, we make cynics out of ourselves, we give ourselves a sense of false hope or finally, just make up our mind to try again.... If we succeed; we celebrate, we rejoice, we proclaim and then we realize the fickleness of this success..... fickle because it leaves us soon..... leaves us because we never deserved it in the first place...... we come back to square one...... I wonder how things would have changed, had we known what we deserved, in the first place.....
Whenever we measure something, there is an element of error involved.... this error either has to be controlled, nullified or embedded into the design..... even when we are measuring the value of what we deserve, the element of error exists...... this error is.... Over-estimation and Under-estimation.... we either think more of ourselves than our true self.... or we think less..... both these scenarios involve a lot of pain and dejection..... and both need to be avoided..... So where do we go from here?..... the answer lies in objectivity...... dont look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself..... see yourself in the mirror and see someone else..... look at yourself in the third person and ask yourself..... "Does this guy/girl really deserve what he is asking for?"...... The answer, depending on the extent of objectivity involved, holds the key to evaluating one's self worth....
Every man is a fraction.... The numerator being, what he is.... and the denominator being, what he thinks he is........ lets strive to give ourselves the answer..... 1
There is a chain of events which precedes and supersedes this..... Most often, we have no idea as to what we deserve.... Nor are we quite clear about what we desire (and if we desire it at all!).... But we try our best to achieve it, nonetheless.... if we fail; we lose hope, we despair, we make cynics out of ourselves, we give ourselves a sense of false hope or finally, just make up our mind to try again.... If we succeed; we celebrate, we rejoice, we proclaim and then we realize the fickleness of this success..... fickle because it leaves us soon..... leaves us because we never deserved it in the first place...... we come back to square one...... I wonder how things would have changed, had we known what we deserved, in the first place.....
Whenever we measure something, there is an element of error involved.... this error either has to be controlled, nullified or embedded into the design..... even when we are measuring the value of what we deserve, the element of error exists...... this error is.... Over-estimation and Under-estimation.... we either think more of ourselves than our true self.... or we think less..... both these scenarios involve a lot of pain and dejection..... and both need to be avoided..... So where do we go from here?..... the answer lies in objectivity...... dont look at yourself in the mirror and see yourself..... see yourself in the mirror and see someone else..... look at yourself in the third person and ask yourself..... "Does this guy/girl really deserve what he is asking for?"...... The answer, depending on the extent of objectivity involved, holds the key to evaluating one's self worth....
Every man is a fraction.... The numerator being, what he is.... and the denominator being, what he thinks he is........ lets strive to give ourselves the answer..... 1
A stitch in time....
All great ideas come at times when you are either away from the computer or when you are too bored to type or even write it down.... Almost everyday at about 5:30-6 am, I get ideas about what my next post should be about... But when the mind becomes active, the body slips into hibernation... After some time I just give myself an empty promise that I'll somehow remember this idea when I come online later that day..... Many days have gone that way.... so, essentially, I think of posts everyday... but I write them intermittently..... that is the problem with intermittence, they are so inexplicably unexplainable!!... How on earth am I to prove that I had something in my mind when there is nothing on paper?
Contrary to this, one can always attribute thoughts or ideas to actions which have already been performed.... so if, the bus that you were initially planning to board, meets with an accident then you can give credit to your heightened effectiveness of the sixth sense....dead people dont have such privileges...
We grow up listening to proverbs and wise words (or wise-cracks, depending on whether you understand them or not!)..... we all know "Think before you act".... but our actions are selectively permeable to words.... so we invariably end up spending more time in thinking and less in execution.... a good beginning is half the battle won.... but therein lies the catch, its only HALF THE BATTLE WON.... who remembers the person who climbed half way to Mt. Everest?.... Lets think, Lets act... and lets not be selectively permeable to what is accepted to be good...
Contrary to this, one can always attribute thoughts or ideas to actions which have already been performed.... so if, the bus that you were initially planning to board, meets with an accident then you can give credit to your heightened effectiveness of the sixth sense....dead people dont have such privileges...
We grow up listening to proverbs and wise words (or wise-cracks, depending on whether you understand them or not!)..... we all know "Think before you act".... but our actions are selectively permeable to words.... so we invariably end up spending more time in thinking and less in execution.... a good beginning is half the battle won.... but therein lies the catch, its only HALF THE BATTLE WON.... who remembers the person who climbed half way to Mt. Everest?.... Lets think, Lets act... and lets not be selectively permeable to what is accepted to be good...
In the long run...
I believe that Life shows its reflection in all walks of life...... a crumpled flower shows how life exists in giving fragrance to the hand that crushes it..... babies show how simple; life can be in the absence of knowledge... and the equity market shows how things even out in the long run...
It is common knowledge in the equity industry that the only person who wins in a continuous bout of trading, is the broker.... not the trader..... so common sense propagates the idea of staying invested for a longer period of time.... historically, the equity market has showed a return of 15-20%, even on investments which were forgotten about for 5 years or so!!...... The same holds true for life too....
Life is an investment and we stay invested by using the currency of work...... so my advice is, stay invested and reap returns...... The saying "good things come to those who wait" is all but misleading..... good things come to those who work and dont wait for results..... When Bhagvad Gita says "karmanye waadi karasye, maa phaleshu kadachana" (do your deed and dont expect any returns), it is not actually proliferating the virtue of philanthropy..... what it actually means to say is that "do your work and but dont run after your returns..... money follows those who dont follow it".....
The day we start looking at monetary benefits as a side effect of hard work and not its means and ends...... that day, we will prosper... in the truest meaning of that term....
It is common knowledge in the equity industry that the only person who wins in a continuous bout of trading, is the broker.... not the trader..... so common sense propagates the idea of staying invested for a longer period of time.... historically, the equity market has showed a return of 15-20%, even on investments which were forgotten about for 5 years or so!!...... The same holds true for life too....
Life is an investment and we stay invested by using the currency of work...... so my advice is, stay invested and reap returns...... The saying "good things come to those who wait" is all but misleading..... good things come to those who work and dont wait for results..... When Bhagvad Gita says "karmanye waadi karasye, maa phaleshu kadachana" (do your deed and dont expect any returns), it is not actually proliferating the virtue of philanthropy..... what it actually means to say is that "do your work and but dont run after your returns..... money follows those who dont follow it".....
The day we start looking at monetary benefits as a side effect of hard work and not its means and ends...... that day, we will prosper... in the truest meaning of that term....
Parallel Tracks
Travelling in Indian railways is always an enlightening experience; especially for those endowed with the ability to discern the extraordinary from the ordinary. The other day I travelled a distance of 400 km on Indian railways and learnt things which I would never have learnt (nor would I have been interested in learning). Here are some excerpts.
It is said that time is the biggest leveller of them all. A wonderful dialogue from an even more wonderful movie goes something like "After the game is over, both the king and the pawn go back into the same box". But come to think of it, so is railways. You can hardly select the religion, caste or even, gender of the passenger sitting next to you. But I really feel that the gender option should be customizable (what say Mr. L.P. Yadav?). On a given day, at a given time, all the people going to the same destination are equals... with equal right to claim seat, eat, breathe, drink and enjoy the journey.
It is a well known fact that much of modern intellectuality has brewed in the coffee pots of various coffee house. Friends, philosophers and comrades discussed everything under the sun. Railways is the new age coffee house. Here, the future of local state governments are discussed and also whether saas-bahu serials must continue or not (and contrary to popular misconception, it is never a one sided debate!)... As long as the person next to you, doesn't have any personal enmity with you, you might get away with any topic!
I for example learnt the interesting aspect of an otherwise staid world of textile marketing, the Haj pilgrimage, the contract system and how the loopholes in them are taken advantage of. I hereby propose to include a frequent long distance train journey in all MBA curriculum. And I suppose everyone on this side of Vastrapur, Ahmedabad will agree with me....
It is said that time is the biggest leveller of them all. A wonderful dialogue from an even more wonderful movie goes something like "After the game is over, both the king and the pawn go back into the same box". But come to think of it, so is railways. You can hardly select the religion, caste or even, gender of the passenger sitting next to you. But I really feel that the gender option should be customizable (what say Mr. L.P. Yadav?). On a given day, at a given time, all the people going to the same destination are equals... with equal right to claim seat, eat, breathe, drink and enjoy the journey.
It is a well known fact that much of modern intellectuality has brewed in the coffee pots of various coffee house. Friends, philosophers and comrades discussed everything under the sun. Railways is the new age coffee house. Here, the future of local state governments are discussed and also whether saas-bahu serials must continue or not (and contrary to popular misconception, it is never a one sided debate!)... As long as the person next to you, doesn't have any personal enmity with you, you might get away with any topic!
I for example learnt the interesting aspect of an otherwise staid world of textile marketing, the Haj pilgrimage, the contract system and how the loopholes in them are taken advantage of. I hereby propose to include a frequent long distance train journey in all MBA curriculum. And I suppose everyone on this side of Vastrapur, Ahmedabad will agree with me....
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