Category: Flawsophy

  • Keep Walking

    A long time back, almost 4 years ago, after seeing Farhan Akhtar’s Lakshya, I’d written about meaning, and purpose, and its relevance in an individual’s life. I guess, as I moved on in life, and feared that time is running out for something, the search for this purpose became more frantic, until I tried to see it in everything that happened to me, and around me. I tried to look at what others were doing, trying to find some parameter of reference. But even if it did exist, it doesn’t seem to be easy to find, and that’s a despairing thought.

    And then, sometime back, this wonderful person shared these lines with me

    “For years, copying other people,
    I tried to know myself.
    From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
    Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
    Then I walked outside.”
    …… Rumi

    And then, I found some more food for thought in Hermann Hesse’ “Siddhartha”. A conversation about searching and finding and the difference between the two approaches. Yes, these seem to be two different approaches, and I thought one was the result of the other. 🙂

    Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.

    When a person searches for something, even something that he defines as a purpose, he focuses on that so much that he is usually oblivious of everything else. It becomes an obsession.

    That really does not mean neglecting every responsibility. But it does mean that I do not automatically categorise experiences as good/bad, useful/not useful etc and be done with it. A mindset change from searching to finding will allow me to look at an experience as just that, and to treat it with more calmness. As one of my favourite tees says, “Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling”

    I guess we all know it, we just need reminders ever so often, because we set goals which we think will ensure happiness… movie this weekend, vacation next month, party tonight…but are we really conscious about the  transient nature of that goal? I’m not going to stop any of it (except for the partying, I never did that anyway:) ), but I will be conscious of its relevance.. and irrelevance  🙂

    until next time, destination nowhere

  • My corner in space.. and time…

    …and it was another Sunday when i lazed around, watched some TV, saw a movie on DVD, blogged, micro blogged, and read. In this case, i finished reading ‘Space’ by James Michener. In case you aren’t familiar with his works, he writes huge sagas, and in this case, he uses human characters and their lives to bring out a tangibility to what was in my mind an abstract – Space. (used in the context of the cosmos)

    I really didn’t do anything world changing, and as most weekends go, this could be classified as a wasted weekend. Of course Calvin would object. To use one of my fave quotes “Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless” or that wonderful “A weekend wasted is not a wasted weekend”. Anyway, it led me extrapolate that to the life being lived, especially because these days, i’m coming across a lot of literature built around setting goals, giving a meaning to life, and so on.

    I think we all fight our battles with the universe, and most usually end up choosing comfortable corners from where we proceed to watch the stories unfold. The size of the corners is one of the things that vary with each of us, another is the extent of our activity in these corners. The rest of the world is a blur. Take the things that you are interested in, put them in this corner, and you should get the blurriness of the world I’m talking about. What makes these corners sometimes uncomfortable is our comparison with others’ corners and our perceptions of its comfort. Also our comfort needs vary over time.

    In our corners, what we do is of consequence to a limited number of people. This number is perhaps, the measure by which we end up conferring tokens of greatness on people. A few words in ‘Space’ caught my attention

    ..you and I live on a minor planet attached to a minor star, at the far edge of a minor galaxy. We live here briefly, and when we’re gone, we’re forgotten. And one day the galaxies will be gone too. The only morality that makes sense is to do something useful with the brief time we’re allotted.

    And that sums up the paradox quite well. What I do is meaningful in the finite time I live in, and is futile in the infinity that I exist in. And as i try to make sense of that paradox, I am also reminded of Floyd’s ‘Time‘. I’d admit that I am frittering my life away, if only I knew what the starting gun was for.

    until next time, keep running… 😐

  • Lost Universes

    Sometime back, I got an email forward – A Violinist in the Metro, about the world famous musician Joshua Bell, who, in 45 minutes, played 6 Bach pieces, with a violin worth $3.5 million, at a metro station in Washington, and collected $32 for the effort. A couple of days back, he had sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats had averaged $100. The incident was a social experiment by Washington Post to check out whether we perceive beauty in a commonplace environment and whether we stop to appreciate it. The findings are a testament of the fast paced life we live, and the things we miss out on.

    But a few other facts in this incident interested me. For one, the crowd segment that paid the most attention to the musician were children. Their parents had to forcibly tug them away. Even if we are cynical and claim that its just curiosity, and not an appreciation of music, I still wonder about our life graph, and the part where we lose our innate curiosity. And its not just curiosity, its innocence, its a lot of other things that we lose on the way.

    When I meet friends from school or college, I sense they’ve changed, and so have I. Attitudes,mindsets, behaviour, all transforming themselves according to the experiences that life throws at us. And because of this, I am not able to relate to them the way I used to at an earlier point in time. A part of me that is perhaps lost forever. Even if I tried to re create it, it would be resisted by the current me.

    The other portion in the incident that interested me was that after the performance, there was no applause or recognition. People just moved on, oblivious to the phenomenon they didn’t perceive. I wonder if Joshua Bell was disappointed. Perhaps, if you’re a musician of that caliber, you would have passed the stage where you needed a stamp of approval. Or is he just like me? An unconfident performer of life, who looks around apologetically if he has upset any balance. Perhaps if i could perform like a carefree child, I could get back the curiosity and the other things that I’ve lost.

    This stream of consciousness reminded me of something I’d read about in the novel Space – a space shuttle’s flight. As it ascends into space, at different levels it discards different parts, parts that were useful to get it to that point, but useless after they’ve served this utility. And after completing the mission that it was sent for, it blazes a path back through the atmosphere, burning all except its core. It lands in a place far away from the place of its origin, and time has passed while all this is happening. In a strange way, it reminded me of the way lives are lived – at massive speeds, too fast to notice the beauty of the vast expanses of space around, to achieve something which is relevant only in a very small context, burning up with the hope that all that is being done is worthwhile, and perhaps in a lost, melancholic way, deciding that since anyway the life is to be lived, might as well live it with a mission, however inadequate it seems.

    until next time, touchdown

  • The egoism that lurks…

    Sometime back, our yoga instructor spoke to us about the importance of forgiving. While most of it I agreed with, there was one part where I thought i’d a different point of view. She said that forgiving was possible only if the ego had been eliminated (for all practical purposes). My point of view (which unfortunately i didnt have time to express) was that ego was inherent in forgiving, showing that the forgiver is in a higher plane than the one forgiven. But I am assuming that the teaching was fine, there must be a kind of forgiving I am not aware of…yet.

    The same kind of thoughts assailed me, when i read this post by mathatheist, where she wrote about charity. (you must subscribe to her daily musings, a wonderful read everyday) She wrote about the need for love (as opposed to pity) in charity. I am in agreement with the role of intent in everything that we do. Intent is what will drive everything else. To be fair to self, I have negligible thoughts of pity in any act of charity. The way i have driven it away is via a simple thought – I imagine someone I love, struck with a fate that the beneficiary has, and compassion replaces pity. I believe there’s a difference between the two. But the compassion is tinged with an enemy that is not so easy to dispose of – the ego. It shows its presence with a smirk and an unhealthy, unnecessary reminder to myself that I’m in a position to donate something (however insignificant it might be) for a cause. But I am assuming that the acts are fine, here must be a state of compassion without the ego, that I am not aware of…yet

    until next time, to land the ego….

    PS. any Ayn Rand fan here? Egosim is an important part of her Objectivism philosophy, which i am otherwise a fan of 😐

  • Forsake

    And sometimes, in the strangest of places, you find food for thought. ‘The Peddler of Soaps’ by Anand Kurian, which I had expected to give me only some entertainment, and not points to ponder, did the former quite well, and tucked away in a page, a paragraph that provided the latter too.

    Because a group is always a compromise, an intellectual or an ethical compromise. And a compromise always involves the lowest common denominator

    I thought about it a bit, and found that I agreed. And it doesn’t even have to be a group. It can even be two individuals, and can involve any of the relationships we have with each other. Friendship, marriage, relatives, professional groups and so on.

    While in the case of close relationships, we might tend to agree with each other most of the time, there are several times when we reach a compromise, sometimes with the other person, but mostly with ourselves, for the sake of the relationship, and the value we attach to it. In fact this value is also the factor that makes us compromise in casual relationships, and larger groups, in which case, the value is perhaps social acceptance.

    Sometimes we forget these compromises, and at other times, they have a long shelf life, like open sores that never go away, as though to remind us that there was a choice, and a different decision might have led to the fulfillment of what we were meant to be. I wonder, by these compromises, do we forsake ourselves?

    until next time, for the sake of….