Category: Life Ordinary

  • Opinion poles

    A few months ago, D and I were talking about something at work making me angry. Since Yoda has said that it is fear that leads to anger, and is the path to the dark side, I needed to figure out the root of that anger, and then understand the fear. I knew it wasn’t job loss (I had already quit), but was stuck.

    I would learn later we tend to focus on negatives, because in the savannah, avoiding the things that might kill you was more important than seeking the things that will give you pleasure. Pleasure and pain are just feedback mechanisms, not an end. Whether it’s the pain caused by your body failing you, or mental agony. Psychological pain is an indication that our subjective map of the world needs a revision. (Cognitive Fitness, Anil Rajput) And that indeed turned out to be the case.

    D insightfully pointed out that my faith in my value system, which I mistakenly assumed others at the workplace also subscribed to, might have been broken by the incident. And that would make me afraid because that is the only one I am comfortable with, and any changes in it would be a compromise I couldn’t abide by.

    I would also learn later that there is a term for something like this, borrowed from physics. Hysteresis – the lingering values of a previous age continuing to guide our judgments.

    The last couple of months have been a great learning experience. About myself, the world at large, and the relationship. One of the important lessons has been that I am free to hold on to my values, and continue to negotiate with others, but as Marcus Aurelius rightly said, “the universe is transformation, life is opinion.“

  • Scale

    Geoffrey West

    I am quite a fan of patterns. It is difficult to look around and not believe that there is some grand order in the scheme of things. But it becomes even more difficult when one does not have the luxury of faith. And thus it is a pleasure when science points to a possible unifying theory that brings some amount of order to what could be mistaken for randomness. Scale begins with showing how ‘there are scaling relationships that quantitatively describe how almost any measurable characteristic of animals, plants, ecosystems, cities and companies scales with size.‘ We are talking of things as varied as metabolic rate, patents, and companies’ income and assets! The simplicity underlying the complexity is what this book is about.

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  • Three score and ten

    He was a shadow of his former self, and his memory was not what it used to be. But I could see his eyes light up when he was reminded of who I was. We spoke a bit, and I like to think that a bit of his joviality returned in those brief moments. My interactions with him are more than three decades old, and our memories of each other are probably a bigger bond than any relationship we have. He complimented my demeanour, much to the annoyance of the other M. He passed away a few weeks later. These days, I am ambivalent about meeting old people. On one hand, I think I’d like to remember them in their prime. But then again, there is a good chance that I’d be meeting them for the last time. So these days, when I do meet, my behaviour factors that in.

    The worst thing about death is the fact that when a man is dead it is impossible any longer to undo the harm you have done him, or to do the good you haven’t done him…They say: live in such a way as to be always ready to die. I would say: live in such a way that anyone can die without you having anything to regret.

    Leo Tolstoy, (via Arthur C. Brooks’ From Strength to Strength)

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  • The flavours of death

    Once upon a time, the only kind of death that would have been written about here would be Death by Chocolate from Corner House. But middle age brings its own set of journeys.

    I don’t remember being afraid of death. I think it was only reinforced after my heart attacked me in 2021! Even during the trip to the hospital and the procedures, I don’t remember being afraid. I wondered later whether it was a remnant of the arrogance of an earlier self – you know, the aura of invincibility and immortality we (or at least I) had around the 20s. They have reduced it to a single word now – swag.

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  • Karma meets an iceberg

    A recent event reminded me of a post about karma I had written half a dozen years ago. The idea of the post was thanks to Umair Haque, who had a definition of karma that was different from the garden variety ‘consequences of your actions’.

    Karma isn’t what you “have” or something you “do”. It’s what you are….. Karma is all the concepts and notions you hold in that tiny little head. All those concepts are stitched together by the idea of “you”, right? So karma is all those concepts, together, which determine your intentions, actions, behavior, all of it.

    Umair Haque
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