Category: Flawsophy

  • Beginnings and Endings

    Saw a lot of new year resolutions on blogs, and that sparked a little post in my head, and it was given a little more sense of direction by a couple of posts – by Aqua and Hyde…
    It is customary to fix a few resolutions on New year, or so they say.. from going to the gym to stop being rude to others to control on number of parallel love lives, it could be anything, depending on subjective fancies..some of us keep it, and some of us just keep it…
    On a larger canvas, by the time we reach the age when we can decide about ourselves, and have quite about decided on ourselves, there are some goals we set for ourselves – personally,professionally and a lot of things that are general, and having to do with the fact that we will be living a certain number of years on the planet… things that we must do (we feel),things that we aspire to do, and things we would love to do… (i wonder if the higher power interferes while we set these)
    as we progress in life, and as our lives progress on us, a lot of these get changed, because of time, the people we interact with, and ironically also because of the sheer inertia that prevents us from changing our habits… (i would love to be at x kgs all my life, but i cant wake up at x am daily to exercise)..and suddenly one day, when we sit staring at the stars, we realise how much we have changed,and how different we are from the original age when we had set these goals… the arbit comments we make on ourselves like ‘i had never thought i would do this’ are only words and we are perhaps not aware of the statement’s depth…
    maybe the initial ideals were right, and maybe the current ‘us’ is right… there is no way to anlayse the paths that might have been… do we owe something to the first time we set our goals, and do we owe something to a higher power which might have set a goal for us…meanwhile, life happens, and perhaps we only happen to be in it….
    until next time, whats happening??

  • Papa Preach!!

    It must be because all of us are around the same age, or maybe its the template way of our existence.. anyways, have recently read at least 3-4 posts that have to do with parents’ retirement.. and again due to the typical way of our existence, its mostly dads who are written about… also interesting are the comments, that in some way identify with the situation…
    while i do agree that retirement in some way creates a void in life thats difficult to replace, i have also begun to think that the above set of dads have achieved more than what we have, or will… and thats perhaps the better way to look at it…
    They have the respect of their sons, daughters.. they have settled themselves well, and even provided for their children.. they may perhaps have never known a career crisis… and they are proud of the work they have accomplished in their career…they havent worked so hard that they never had time for the little joys in life.. they have passed on a value system to their next generation..they can look back and say that they did justice to their parents, in terms of time and attention..
    yes, they might offer you advice that you wouldn’t follow, and bore you with what they did and how, but that, i guess is a nice way of knowing about a way of life that once was…
    until next time, father figures…best

  • Marginal Utility

    I can see all those with a fair knowledge of economics arch their eyebrows upward :).. to confess,i dont know it in depth… all i remember is the ‘orange’ example… and so (for the benefit of those who dont know the theorem) here goes, the satisfaction you gain by eating oranges decreases with each orange that you eat… and orange was only an example (for those who dont like oranges, and those who dont eat more than an orange at a time, i dont think you were considered while formulating the theory)… well, now since everyone is on the same page, the reason for the reference is to do with happiness… does the law of diminishing marginal utility apply to happiness..
    i faintly remember the prof saying that it was only applicable to (thats when i slept off..)….and so, i will humor my thought… even though happiness can come through different sources -listening to good music, an appreciative comment, good food, pay hike, doing a good deed, landing a good job, a good spouse and so on and so forth, could it be that our chances of deriving happiness out of something- anything, could be decreasing.. if not chances, at least the amount of happiness that we derive…
    if we keeping getting all the things that make us happy, maybe we start failing to appreciate them, which is perhaps what is happening to us right now… with so much of currency floating around, EMIs and credit card swipes may have changed the way we look at happiness, and made ‘happiness’ more easy, to the extent that even happiness is commoditised… maybe thats exactly whats wrong…
    until next time, laws are meant to be broken…

  • Breaking news….

    Its not exactly breaking news that the media industry is looking at a phenomenal boom in the next few months.. and thats across the verticals – print, radio, television and so on..which raises the question of how much ‘news’ acually happens in the world on a daily basis.. is it so much that the existing entities are not enough to make sure that all of it reaches the world, and if not, then what justifies the mushrooming of more of their kind? which is, i guess, when we get into creation of news, sting operations and overall sensationalising of trivia.. when a malayala manorama in kerala would carry the ‘news’ that your neighbour’s cow broke its tether and damaged your fence, and NDTV would get its video footage and classify it as ‘Breaking news’.. you would be happy, so would your neighbour, since any publicity is good publicity.. but will i, sitting hundreds of kilometers away and not having any specific interest in bovine revolutionary tactics, be interested in the news? i guess not..
    the argument would be that ‘you dont like it, dont watch it’, but what if all the channels/publications think its worthy news, what option does that leave? nothing, and sadly we have only ourselves to blame, because we are less interested in reading/seeing Chidambaram’s fiscal policy than Nigar Khan’s physical policies…
    but what prompted me to think about this entire trip was manorama’s week long front page coverage of the death of a malayali in afghanistan.. isnt that exactly what the terrorist group would want? extensive media coverage and a sublimal building of fear in the citizens? on a parallel note, a murderer would get much more prominence in coverage than a guy who might have saved a life..
    by creating sensations out of every possible trivia that happens in every remote corner, isn’t the media encouraging a whole lot of wrong things? there is a thin line between right to information and right information, and it takes a lot of maturity to walk the line…and so it aint so strange after all that lives full of trivia would slowly but surely get converted into trivial lives, for who wouldnt want their 15 secondsof fame?

    until next time, what news??

  • Fix you…

    Once again, so what exactly is it that we would love to do.. while it is an interesting debate whether we would stop loving things if we began to get paid for it, are there still things that fall outside that set, and which we would love doing irrespective of anything else…
    I, for one, would love to sing for a living, not at concerts, but more of a wandering bard…would love to write a book, and be happy if 5 people read it, loved it and felt it had made a difference in their lives.. would love to have my own chat shows and crack the kind of PJs that would help create homicidal maniacs..:).. some of the above are stuff which i might be able to pull off, and some i might realise that i wasnt quite cut out for…maybe thats what living a full life is all about… doing all these and being able to say that i tried everything.. maybe thats what makes happiness…
    or maybe its about knowing exactly what is it that you can do and want to do.. and then setting about achieving it whatever be the odds…which is perhaps what makes alonso world champion at 24, or sachin a treat to watch after more than decade of watching him… or an amitabh bachchan a star twice over.. maybe thats what makes happiness….
    maybe its about finding love, and keeping it, and knowing that whatever else happens, that person will always be by your side.. maybe thats what makes happiness…
    and meanwhile we walk the paths, some common, some uncommon and hope that God is singing to us(instead of Coldplay)
    Lights will guide you home..
    and ignite your bones…
    and i will try and fix you…

    until next time, are we in a fix??