Category: Choices

  • The philosophy of Jubal Harshaw

    Robert A. Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961, and that’s where I met Jubal Harshaw, though he has apparently featured in other books by the author. He is described thus – “Jubal E. Harshaw, LL.B., M.D., Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author extraordinary, neo-pessimist philosopher, devout agnostic, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice.”

    Also, “Dr.Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive and parasite by choice, had an almost Martian attitude towards “hurry”. Being aware that he had but a short time to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in immortality, he purposed to live each golden moment as eternity – without fear, without hope, with sybaritic gusto. To this end he required something larger than Diogenes’ tub but smaller than Kubla’s pleasure dome; his was a simple place, a few acres kept private with electrified fence, a house of fourteen rooms or so, with running secretaries and other modern conveniences. To support his austere nest and rabble staff he put forth minimum effort for maximum return because it was easier to be rich than poor – Harshaw wished to live in lazy luxury, doing what amused Harshaw.”

    Some reviewers consider him to be the author’s mouthpiece. Whatever that might be, and from the little I know of him, I have been impressed by Harshaw’s philosophy. My favourites below.

    1. “…most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers.”
    2. “I believe in everyone’s working out his own damnation but that is no excuse to give a dynamite cap to a baby”
    3. “Do-gooding is like treating haemophilia – the real cure is to let haemophiliacs bleed to death… before they breed more haemophiliacs.”
    4. “You go into a man’s house, you accept his household rules. That’s a universal rule of civilised behaviour.”
    5. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

    It’s really heartening to see how a worldview can resonate after decades. From there flows the idea of focusing on things that do not change.

  • 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.“

  • 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
    (more…)

  • Besting myself

    One of my only birthday rituals has been getting a call in the morning from an aunt and uncle, though they have been more friends than uncle/aunt. This year there was no call in the morning. I wondered what happened. I realised that our last conversation ended with me reprimanding them for calling me in the middle of a work day morning! The no-call bothered me and I thought to myself that at some point in their life, people should let go of their egos and silly sulks. The note to self was to be more conscious of the ego’s manifestations.

    At work, a colleague wrote, asking for some work to be done at the very last minute. The team was already stretched, and I wrote back curtly, reminding him that we had met for this a few weeks ago, and discussed the deliverables in advance, precisely because I wanted to avoid this! I had a feeling he would escalate this.

    My aunt called in the evening. I couldn’t pick up since I was on a call. She left a voice message. She had woken up with a migraine, and had been in bed all day. We spoke later in the evening, and bantered as usual.

    The colleague wrote back, profusely thanking us for all the help we had given him thus far. He understood that this would be tough, and he was fine with whatever we could manage, even if it was nothing.

    In the many podcasts and books I have read/heard (Jack Kornfield on the TKP podcast being the latest), the lesson is usually about the present moment. Every moment, we have a choice. To be the best version of ourselves, or not. I have had a gazillion misses, and a handful of hits. What I have learned from the latter is that there is an afterglow when we are able to be the best version. It is possible to do that without an expectation in return. In fact, it is quite selfish – such is the feeling.

    In addition to pausing ‘in the moment’, there are two tricks I read/heard to repeat this. The first (from Unwinding Anxiety) is savour the moment and update the brain on how good the feeling is. Because the brain is most likely trained on a notion of loss we might suffer if we say, let go of the ego or interest. Updating it repeatedly redirects it to a new habit formation. The second (from an episode in The Hidden Brain podcast) is also related to habit-changing. Though it was discussed in the context of more standard habits, I realised it could be tooled for this purpose as well. Buy a band or a ring, and make a covenant with yourself – of sticking to the habit you want to create. Each time you fail, switch the band/ring to the other hand.

    Besting myself, as the birthdays pile on, is possible, but it does take effort. However, I am quite sure now that it’s also a journey full of joys. Time to march with the band!

  • Clarity begins at home

    Maybe it’s a 40s thing, or maybe it’s just me projecting my top-of-the-mind thought on to others, but these days, ‘the place to retire to’ is a recurring theme in many conversations with friends. Once upon a time, in line with Pico Iyer’s “Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It’s the place where you become yourself”, Bangalore was an obvious choice. A few years ago, Cochin got back into the consideration set, as I veered more towards who I was than what my self image was. The mind and its narratives.

    During a recent trip to Cochin, when a classmate described my school-self to D, I had a moment straight out of a Kazuo Ishiguro book. He is one of my favourite writers, and at least two of his books feature narrators with flawed memory constructions. In the books, it is fascinating to watch the peeling of reality against the narrator’s reconstructions. Ishiguro is kind, and usually brings the narrator down gently. In my case, I was first shocked to realise how I was like one of his narrators, and then pleasantly surprised at how my friend remembered me. Maybe he was being kind. But this isn’t the first time. When a similar recollection about me had happened with one of our other classmates during a reunion a few years ago, I had brushed it off as his false narrative. Because my own perception of who I was then was different. But after this, I realised that this was the key to Cochin behaving like a magnet!

    In Capital, Rana Dasgupta wrote – ‘when one becomes homesick, it is not a place that one seeks, but oneself, back in time.’ Despite my conscious mind’s narrative constructions, my subconscious probably remembers it more accurately. It remembers someone whose sense of humour did not have the cynicism that an adult life gifted it. Someone whose whistling skills seemed like magic to his friends because it was not self-conscious. Maybe, by pulling me back to a place, the mind believes it can also pull me back to a time and a self that was happy with itself. That him who I was.

    And maybe it’s not just that. Before I left Cochin, I made it a point to visit an old hangout. An aunt’s home. My mother’s cousin, whose granddaughters were roughly my age, but insisted on calling me ammava (uncle) especially in public. My memories of that place and my aunt, and these I am sure of because there are physical spaces that could testify to it, are ones I cherish and am deeply grateful for. The place and the person brought a sense of warmth and security to a teen life that was troubled by loss, and a mind that did not even realise it was unmoored. I see the afternoons and evenings I have spent there as an incomparable act of kindness. A refuge from the world at large.

    So maybe what drags me back to Cochin is a little more than who I was. It is also about those around me at a certain stage of my life. The friends who made me feel special. The people who made me feel secure. And places that are so deeply etched in my memory that it would be impossible to feel lost even now. Even as I realise that the places and people may no longer be around and that this construct is one that fits the current idea that I have of myself, I also think that somehow the mind will conspire to project an environment that can anchor me.

    P.S. As I began writing this, I had an intense sense of deja-vu. Very meta. I had gone through these thoughts before, I was sure. And indeed I had. That is somehow reassuring.