I can already foresee the expression of “What the hell was he thinking when writing this piece of crap with no symphony between the beginning and the ending?” Well! That’s me, jumping from one thought to another with a speed much faster than speed of light. Catch me if you can! There is a lot of “reading between the lines and words too” here. People say that normally, it is not advisable to convey anything blunt & direct. But I believe that truth is one and we are all bound to it by our existence and unfortunately I am pathetic & miserable in that art of coming to the point in spiral motion. I hate it that way. I exhibit a strong tendency to jump the flow of information. Very often, I put forth the conclusion of “Z” expecting other people to understand the alphabetic process of “A, B, C…” Anyways, the point is words are the means for meaning and that meaning is subject to individual interpretations, conclusions and judgments so I am writing in the language which I understand and also because of the fact that I detest the stagnancy in any form inducing it’s inherent “slowness” and in this case, it could have been the explanation to be given for the perceived “complex” part. And I bluntly admit that this blog is a manifestation of what I am thinking since quite a long time. I am tired of being in control of self, being a prisoner of my own jail, just like hawk’s mind trapped in a pigeon’s body. And thats why this blog is a statement of expression of my feelings
So to begin, my mind always needs a food for thought. I relax even to think about relaxation. Sometimes I wish, if at all, my mentation stops; just to feel the repercussions but it never happens. Mind is always busy connecting the dots, discovering the meaning, looking for new avenues of knowledge and blah blah blah. These days, I often find myself looking into void and thinking. Mention about the words, confusion, perplexing, dumb-found, baffling, and astounding – and you don’t have to churn out dictionary pages to find their meaning, you can see them prominently on my face. There is a catch in that – face value is different because deep inside I experience the feeling of knowing, understanding things, at least I can claim that I found glimpses of understanding if not the whole thing.
Talking about us as people, we all are hard-wired in every possible unique way at the behest of creator, may be it is his/her “so be it” wish to experience “imperfections” through us. I would be hesitant to use the word “everything” in the above sentence, because human race is just in the debating phase on the validity of string theory right now, it’s a long or may be never ending way till we discover & understand “theory of everything”. I can not mention about others but I like to live life in fast lane where constant cerebral stimulation is my source of energy, where I can exhaust either my body or my mind or the better, both. I thrive on being challenged cerebrally as well as physically. Not because I always want to win. Wining and losing doesn’t matter to me because the process of challenge & retorted action helps me in setting benchmarks. I remember telling my friend often that a greatest sight for me is a man whose mind and body are focused on a single task and acting in tandem. For example: I often feel my adrenaline on my skin when I am watching a movie epitomizing heroism in its right sense, in the past it used to be watching Pete Sampras on Wimbledon court on the way to his winning streak there or Sachin smashing Australian bowlers all over the park in Sharjah although in my standards because of nature of crises, worthwhile examples are of - Alan Greenspan deftly defending U.S. Economy (a de facto locomotive for world economy) when crisis after crisis was thrown at him and George Orwell’s expression of truth in wonderful fables of “Animal Farm” & “1984” against the general opinion prevailing during 1930s and 1940s. Now these are men of “Right” convictions, although there are many but only few of them have the ability to execute their convictions and that’s what makes them champions. They don’t care which way the current is moving; they just have their target in sight. They make me believe in the quote “Action speaks louder than words”.
Anyways coming back to me again, stimulation & experimentation being the prime mover of my spirit, I sought to experience the detachment of mind and body. I wanted to feel emotions of a phrase “out of place”. I carried my body where my mind never intended or wanted to take it. I experienced it when I indulged voluntarily to relax my thinking muscles of gray matter in my head. It only paved the way for my own degradation in my own eyes. I was wandering with the depravity of purpose. But something had to happen and it happened when it came across to me in words in “Atlas Shrugged” that “Joy is the core of existence, the motive power of every living being, that it is the need of one's body as it is the goal of one's spirit, that body was not a weight of inanimate muscles, but an instrument able to give me an experience of superlative joy to unite my flesh and my spirit.” I asked one simple question to myself “where be my joy?” and I found that it is in the guiltless desires of my mind and the same desires manifested in actions.
Now I think what if I was alone in this world to carry out all my desires with no one to stop me or the other way round, nobody’s presence would bother me from executing my actions. Would that be a perfect world? This is an interesting question. Of course, with only two possible outcomes of “Yes” or “No”. Answer “Yes” is utopian world which exists only in figments of imagination or wonderful daydreams and answer “No” is the real world. Now the above passage is a testimony to the fact that I am little bit conscious of my actions and perception about them by outside world. When I introspect this matter two things happen in my mind, first - I often wish if I was like the character of Howard Roark of Fountainhead, completely detached and then - I generally use borrowed statement of “I am just a common man” as an excuse to console my mind and get moving on in life.
We live in a world where interactions are inevitable. Research has proven that human beings are naturally social animals and they often feel the need to interact with the outside world in some way or the other. Nobody wants to be alone and I am no exception. I have my soul mates too in Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, George Orwell, and Lord Shrikrishna to name a few because their guidance, logic and emotions; the whole persona appeal to my heart and brain. But problem is most of them are either dead in their grave or they are just fictional characters in a movie or a book. I can not talk to them or interact with them. Now that’s where “Friends” come into picture. Everyone meeting for the first time is a stranger. Then few of these strangers strike resonance to upgrade their status into friends. A resonance is a very exciting phenomenon reflecting nothing but meeting of two similar energies, perhaps the purest form of fusion and union. As an individual, my brain is tuned to a broad spectrum of frequencies and when I receive the same frequencies from other people, I find it tempting to make friends with them. Friends you choose are the reflection of your own being and of the things that make you exist. Why do you seek friends? The simplest answer to this question would be "to feel good & be happy" about the whole companionship. Friendship for me is a place of solace and to express my feelings, to listen and learn good things, a place of complete freedom devoid of any judgments and of tacit understanding & respect for each other as a person.
For some odd reasons, back-propagation algorithm dealing in pattern-recognition installed in my neural networks is relatively strong which has armed me with “see through” ability. Most often in the name of friendship what I see is, diplomacy and urge for being politically correct by following the good and bad books philosophy, people restricting their own freedom in order to impress upon each other for the sake of impression. They make friendship and then they use it as a platform of playing games of winning or loosing, establishing superiority over each others, a typical display of “wannabe” attitude, witnessing of a public display of affection which has lost its dignity of love and which borders on soft-porn levels of lust, albeit that love and lust go hand in hand, love has omnipresence qualities about it which lust doesn’t have. A friendship is sacred bond which insures freedom while giving you an assurance of a companionship. I have had my fair share of experience of friendship where “friends” have to meet regularly in order to keep that fire of friendship alive. To meet across the table, to chit-chat, gossip, talk behind the backs of people, enjoy these trivial conversations and laugh on other people’s stupidity. I feel out of place with this idea of enjoying my time. I partially understand this logic of meeting each other frequently. I don't like it and don't approve of it. It has lot to do with me as a person because my threshold for boredom is very low, the situations and people are very predictable. There are certain things which really make me furious and one of them is obvious devoid of logic which I see many times around me. I can’t sit at one place and do nothing. I value my own as well as others happiness & time too much. I respect what others want to do; at the same I respect my wants & desires too. I don't have problem in complying with others if I feel I can have fun in complying. And at times, if there is a conflict, everyone is free to go their own way without any round of question-answers. In fact, I have had my own personal experiences of people putting up entire history of friendship at stake because of this, which in turn makes me ask a question to myself “Why am I friends with him or her? If he/she doesn’t understand me as a person?” “Why is it my job every time to oblige or be complacent to their wishes? Or am I being fool not to put forth my wills strongly?” I hate it, when I feel that may be I should have been happy if I had done that or been there to witness it, for missing out on that moment of joy. I am not complaining but I like to highlight the fact that, I am a sort of individual who in a friendship, gives freedom and demands the same in return. Obligation is a strict no-no, emotional exploitation in the name of “You don’t understand friendship at all. For friends, you have to do it” gets on to my nerve. I feel suffocated if I am doing something out of that feeling. Sometimes on my retorting, I have been suggested to look at the “bigger picture” and to bring that bigger picture onto real world canvas; you have to climb down the ladder of compromises. Then I want to tell them, I very well understand the difference between trivialities & bigger picture. The bigger picture is:- friendship is a place where friends do not live for each other but are ready to die for each other.
I see two distinct kinds of religions in people; one minority set desires to lead life with the ultimate power of earned & sought knowledge and the other majority which lives in blessed ignorance. There exists a middle ground as well: these are people living on denial & defiance and who will stick to their proposition of “Left is Right” in their narrow minds; they seek to conform & justify their ignorance with faiths & beliefs often sacrificing reason in that process. When you point out the "relatively unpleasant" truth to this kind of crowd, you would expect the most common reply of "Whatever" which perhaps I define in following words "I would rather desire ignorance about it" expression slapped all over their faces. In response to “whatever” at times I wish to quote Aldous Huxley's famous words of "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored" but often the same Aldous Huxley's one step higher quote "Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth" keeps my mouth shut.
There are some important things which I hold them very close & would prefer to indulge & let my mind simmer through them. I enjoy it very much. All I want to do is what I want to do but not at the expense of others, in a sense I will not ask them to comply with my desires. These days this streak of individualism is creating quite a stir in my life. I feel distant from others. A relationship with an obligation is a burden for me. Somehow compulsion disguised in obligation creeps in to exploit the bond. If I feel that I am being judged in whatever manner for the thoughts and actions which in my judgment are within the confinement of reason & based on the premises of ethics, I feel suffocated. Ideally, it shouldn’t affect me at all but I owe to the corruption made possible by emotions and circumstances to make it real and finally who is to be blamed; nobody but myself.
Not me and not any-one, is born with “axioms of knowledge”. A raw form has to undergo a transformation through the furnace of experience of acting, reading, seeing, hearing, thinking and trying to come out in shape. After struggling and passing grades in the department of intellect, it has come to a stage where abstraction, essence and absolute are the ones that matter. I have come to realize that contradictions are just delusions, they represent errors in thinking and only the absolute is real. There is no half measure for the truth; it is one & an end in itself. Now what matters the most is the creation and then creative improvisation based on faculty of judgment which is mine and my own. It’s just about reaching heights which you can only define & experience as you and only you have the key to the home of your happiness. You are happy when you conform to your own nature based on the ethical & logical premises. It happens by maintaining your own space and not invading the others. I don’t believe in religion but I believe in the “way of life”. I believe in one sentence of “existentialism” which says “a man finds a law in his freedom”. And I bow to that freedom.
The inner world is an entity - so complex and hard to comprehend. I have always felt that understanding the world in terms of creation and Darwinian evolution has never been a goal but a mere single step towards understanding oneself. It seems as though life is just a fusion of wonderful contradictions or paradoxes, all crusted with those specks of randomness and unpredictability. We all are running a race against time. A race of consumption. Who is consuming whom?
What is the purpose of life? Who am I?
Probably it is this age - confusion, aggregation of emotions, interactions and hormone levels; all of these are the prime movers of unyielding thought processes, because every time I try to draw up conclusions to buy inner peace I realize that due to ongoing & impending learning process these conclusions are just temporary halts in a long journey of life. I am discontented with this theory of defining life as a time gap from birth to death. I am sure it is definitely more than that, perhaps a salvation to eternity beyond the boundaries of space and time.
I question the validity of superstitious customs and discrimination based on caste, religion, sects and denominations. God doesn't discriminate? Congregational prayers and devotional songs do not satisfy my zeal to realize God. I would rather believe in spiritual connectivity through self-discipline and meditation. I am not readily obedient but curious, I want to know - “what is it that by knowing which everything else is to be known." That is my penultimate search. It has always been in my nature to test before acceptance. Wholehearted acceptance doesn't come easily to me. I never want to abandon reasoning in the excuse of faith with belief with the exception of one in God - The source and the sink of everything.
I am not a fundamentalist with a conviction in single belief to the exclusion of others. I am an open-minded libertarian, all vulnerable to the feelings of contrasts apparently because of my present inability to see beyond the differences amongst ourselves and this difference lies in the basic principle of omnipresent & ALL IN ONE - God.
I am a member of the most amusing species of animals available on our green planet. I have spent hours and hours thinking about them only to see myself seeking solace in that peg of alcohol. God, Time, Space, Purpose of our (pseudo) existence and Love are aspects which still remain a mystery. I will continue to unravel this mystery. Until then I will live as quoted by Rudyard Kipling in “IF”:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Dragging my life through mediocrity & routine, without a sense of any credible achievement, I always want to wander through the minds of geniuses, want to look up to them out of the greed for inspiration and motivation. I want to reason my mind for the speciality created by the prefix "Extra" to the word "Ordinary" in its meaning and then I see, hear, read about some individuals who stands out like colossal moutains because of their geniuses, distinguishing themselves from the lesser mortals. Role models can inspire us to aim for goals and achieve ambitions which we think are beyond ourselves. It's good to have these dreams and ambitions and to have people who inspire us to go for it! The desire to know them springs out of a simple fact that I want to be like them and whenever I learn about them, it creates a sort of resonance in my head in terms of values projected, followed and appreciated by these individuals. This is the blog dedicated to those extra-ordinary & distinguished people.
My role models.
SPORTS
THINKERS / ACADEMIA
The ability to think & predict the future comes from the knowledge of the past and understanding of the present, and it really needs phenomenal intelligence and infinite capacity to absorb & process the information, which these guys were gifted with. In fact I would be wrong in saying that these guys only predicted the future because they almost created & crafted it. The impact of their thinking on their respective fields of expertise is tremendous, perhaps they were/are influential in changing the mindset of whole society. In today's digital age, the comparision would be like this, if normal human beings are Pentium-4 processors then these guys were/are IBM's DEEP BLUE (the supercomputer that beat Gary Casporov in Chess championship). I have read that geniuses eventually differentiate themselves from the rest through great originality. Intellectual geniuses usually have crisp, clear-eyed visions of given situations, in which interpretation is unnecessary—the facts just hit them, and they build or act on the basis of those facts, usually with tremendous energy.This list can be really long but I will just mention very few names which really influence my thought processes.
I would describe him with only four words "Thinker of the Century". I guess it sums up all.
Milton Friedman
Being myself a hardcore capitalist, no one could have been a better choice than Milton Friedman to be my role model in that field. He has used his ingenius mind to advance a moral vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions. A see-through-chaos vision of a perfect society built on the foundations of true capitalism and freedom of choice.
Simplifying the business environment with his brilliant "5-forces" framework. Guru of Strategy. And No.1 on the list of Top 50 thinkers in the world at present. Men like him are responsible for taking the way we do business to the next level of civilization & sophistication.
BUSINESS
The internal combustion engine was the technological centrepiece & main driving force behind the flabbergasting economic & industrial growth in 20th century but 21st century belongs to Intel's PENTIUM chips or Micrprocessors which will take the entire human civilization to the next level. No one captured the speed of evolution of today's technology dependent society than Dr. Andrew S. Grove (Ex-CEO of Intel) with his amazing "10X change" barometer. Emphasizing on the virtue of the statement "Only change is the constant", his book "Only the Paranoid survive" guides us on how to steer and navigate life of business and business of life through "Strategic Inflection Points". I admire him for his observing power & the use of logic to reason cause & effect matrix.
Amazing Sixth Sense. No wonder he is the second richest man in the world. No one knows better than this legend, affectionately known as "Oracle of Omaha" for the right reason so, when it comes to the word I for Investment. Right moment, Right place and Warren Buffet, this is all it takes to create a fortune. And a true "karma yogi", when he declared that all his fortune worth US$ 40 billion will go for charity. Hats off to you Sir!
Narayana Murthy
The only Indian making it to the list of Top 10 "Most admired business leaders". A true role model for today's young generation. He has proved that success in business can be achieved by following the path of integrity, ethics and highest moral standards. He is a role model for every aspiring entrepreneur in India. I have great regards for his judgement on right and wrong & for his ability to stand by what he perceives as right.
This guy is a puzzle for me. I am still not able to answer the question that how the heck the same guy could be an Engineer who invented the first armoured tank, the most acclaimed painter who painted the ever smiling Monalisa, anatomist who studied The Vitruvian Man, an enigma who practised cipher mirror-writing and many more traits. Hats off to this polymath for his unmatched brilliance & creativity. No wonder, till date he is the only UNIVERSAL GENIUS known to the world.
I am a crazy fan of his Marathi literature. He won the hearts of millions of Maharashtrians by weaving RK Laxman's common man characters in beautiful & humurous stories making us laugh & conveying sublime messages in an understanding language. He was Leonardo Da Vinci of Maharashtra being a writer, director, actor, musician & lyricist all at the same time.
The actor of the millenium by BBC poll conducted in 2000. Already there has been written too much on his magnetic & charming personality and I don't think I can add more to it. I am in awe of his towering personality, apart from peerless acting, what I admire in him, are his qualities of a true fighter, the character which he played in numerous movies creating an image of "Angry Young Man", when he re-established himself leaving the dark past of bankruptcy behind. He impresses everyone the way he carries himself, with dignity and by maintaining a diplomatic poise, it is further glorified by the high baritone which has become kind of symbolic in India.
Last but definitely not the least! I am sure the name above mentioned has some strange curious effects on readers. Ok! in Hindu mythology, he is the guy who gave the world "Geeta", and who is recognized as the incarnation of the supreme soul itself. I am just running out of words to show my greatest regards for this perfect, infinite, omnipotent & omnipresent character. He was just a mythical character for me till the time I read Geeta. "The way of life" explained in Geeta just struck me like a bolt of lightening, simple yet powerful enough that my logic & heart allowed for their own submission & immersion in those beautiful verses.
So these are the people, I draw my inspiration from.
Anyways, I am petrified because there is a likely probability that in near future even my independence will be endangered. Right now, I am happy about the way I am living my life, I go to places where I feel like going to, I watch the movies & TV channels which I like to see, I keep my place the way I want to keep (This is difficult but still managable when you are sharing the room with a disciplined & (Beyond necessity) hygiene concious room mate.) I go back to home when I want to. I eat food which I like & when I want. I love the fact that I am not responsible for anyone except of course for a small family of mine, I like to make my own decisions. I love this independence and any kind of intrusion just freaks me out.
In a way, conciously or unconciously I have started to prepare myself for this inevitable Yin-Yang union because friends & most importantly my family think that I make a good matrimonial proposition (Or may be a Sacrifical Goat???) for the following reasons:-
1. 26-27 is the best age to get married and I am now 25.
2. Most people think that I have a stable career ahead even though personally I desire a lot to be conquered.
3. My financial status is sound.
In my preparation attempts under the effect of feelings such as confusion, fear, excitement! (Each of these feelings has their own valid reason for eg. fear of jeopardizing independence, excitement of honeymoon), just out of curiosity, I refered to Freudian psychoanalysis theory in an anticipation to learn about "What does a Woman want?" but eventually I learnt that even the legendary Sigmund Freud mentioned the following quote to one of his friend
"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"
I know you folks might call me weird because, for preparation, most guys study "SCIENTIFICALLY" more about revered "Kamasutra". (I just thought I should mention the word "SCIENTIFICALLY" because before marriage, guys witness only the "raw action" through different mediums such as black market CDs, under the bed magazines & forbidden sites on internet, and few lucky ones get to experiment with the action.)
Anyways, there is also a deeper understanding that marriage is not a mathematics where you calculate what you will gain and what you will lose, but it's a need for human beings with a social nature; where two people share their lives by accepting & complemeting each other towards a harmonious co-existance. The most important criterion for me, is that the woman of my dreams is the one who will accept and love me the way I am, not for the way she wants me to.
We often underestimate the virtue & value of time despite the fact that it is the greatest gift to this universe & the cause of our existence. It is the motion of a wheel without which a wheel has no meaning. It is the creator when everything begins with it and it is the destroyer when everything ends with it.
One wise gentleman has said that "we can solve 4/5th of our problems in a fraction of time that we normally would take, if we can just sit and introspect".
And in this time, I find my true friend, solitude. Solitude is my truest friend, where my thoughts get a chance to be in sync with the nature and my imagination gets an opportunity to spread its wings beyond earthly subjects & objects. Solitude gives me "TIME TO SIT & RELAX". It allows me to be "100% MYSELF". It helps me to learn, to reflect, to concentrate, to meditate, it guides me to make right choices. If offers me shoulder when I am in pain & suffering. It is in this time, when I talk to myself, I laugh at myself, I think. I understand the responsibilities. I "CHALLENGE MY BELIEFS". And most importantly, it offers me a "PEACE OF MIND". This is the time when I see "HOPE". Loneliness is imposed but Solitude is a choice. Loneliness is about restlessness but Solitude is about rest. Solitude is not an act of cowardice but it's an act of courage, to challenge, to understand, to act. It's a window of opportunity towards the perfection.
This is what I intend to do in times of crisis. I want to use this eternal gift of time to change its state from Bad to Good. I want peace.
¶ 10:54 AM 1 comments
In a practical realm, every situation is the sum of its empirical pros and cons. In my opinion which is from a Utilitarian’s Point of View, any action taken is on finer side if it; in terms of Value Addition, provides significant gains to the majority, without any significant harm done to the minority. We just can not blindly apply “IDEAL RULES” to any situation. Weighing down pros Vs cons vis-à-vis the bigger picture, should decide the course of action. After all, it is all about understanding the bigger picture in terms of pluralistic good and making the right choices to strike a balance on the finer side and if it involves things against ethics - established good practices that is what I would call them, then outcome of the situation and its longer term repercussions should be well thought of and given the highest priority & weightage.
For example,
1. We have laws to execute a serial killer and we did and are practicing the laws, why? Because we are talking of killing someone whose life can cause greater harm to society than his death. A perfect example would be “Geeta” (Guys, stop guessing, I am talking about “Bhagwad Geeta” (Song of the Lord)), to establish a kingdom of good deeds, Lord Krishna coaxes Arjuna to kill his relatives & kins.
2. We often end up bribing the decision maker in a business environment, why? Because if you won’t, you might not be able to generate & bring business to your organization and 100-1000s of your fellow employees working around the globe will lose their job.
3. How about talking profit at any cost? Highly expensive medicines could be an example here. AIDS drugs are expensive and unaffordable in African nations where the people afflicted have no money to buy food. But still big pharmaceutical companies (which I won’t name, since this is a public domain. To know more about them, please follow WTO Patent Rights Negotiations) want to make big bucks out of their patented or invention rights. So is it wrong if a country like India producing the same drugs in bulk by violating patent rights to supply to its own AID victims & surplus to African Nations to combat the AIDS epidemic? Is it a form of stealing, I don’t think so. For me, it’s a perfect act.
I was just watching “Syriana” with my friend and one of the memorable dialogues is still lingering in my head and it is about Corruption!!
"Corruption? Corruption ain't nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us
safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around here instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."
I just thought, Isn’t it true? The last sentence is very important. We live in the age of cut-throat competition created by the market economies of capitalistic societies where it is all about Winning and Losing. We are in the Peter Drucker’s “Survival of the fittest” times where unfortunately, we don’t co-operate but we compete to survive.
It says & means a lot. Nothing is & won't be ideal & perfect, and if it is, then earth would be heaven and all of us would be angels but we all know that it is not the reality. Everyone can't be happy, there will be clashes & conflicts based on DESIRES & INTERESTS pursued by individuals, groups, states, nations. In order to resolve these conflicts, we have to make compromises & sacrifices and take actions which might contradict to the significance of “Protected Values” for the overall good; be it within your own organization or outside the organization and on a broader level in life and society.
This is a very broad subject and I can go on writing but this is a blog not a book, so I will leave it to you to think & interpret and make your own judgment on this issue.
Coming back to Group dynamics, there are always people in a group, who just can't stand each other for reasons sometimes beyond comprehension at least to my conscience, wait a second, even I am one of them, towards certain individuals where I always get the feeling "There is something terribly wrong with this person" and every time I look at their faces, it reminds me of a "Red signal" at the traffic lights. It takes a lot for me to start liking people & getting friendly with them. I get bored easily even though I don't show it. I just turn my ears deaf to any small talk that is taking place in a group. Sometimes because of quietness on my side, my caring friends ask for the proof of my existence on planet earth, asking whether something is wrong with me, I just don't understand what makes them think that way. Is it really important to participate in a conversation which you do not find interesting, just for the sake of showing your presence? And it is not the case as if I am not enjoying being in a group, instead I thoroughly enjoy observing idiosyncrasies of different people in a group, perhaps this is the reason, one of my most favorite scenes is Robin Williams explaining the importance of idiosyncrasies in life by giving example of his own wife who used to fart in the bed and then upon hearing this Matt Damon bursting into laughter in Good Will Hunting. I just love those small funny moments & simple things in life that is what really brings a real joy to me for eg. watching the curiosity & innocence in the eyes of my two friend's respective niece and nephew or a watching a movie like Hera Pheri. There is often a gap of Pacific Ocean about what I like to think about (eg. Watching "The Matrix") and where I find a true joy (eg. Watching "Munnabhai MBBS").
My preferred focus was and will always be on thoughts and ideas for which there is no linear function; any event at any moment can trigger any idea or thought. And it ranges from Karl Marx's "DAS KAPITAL" to Thomas Friedman's "THE LEXUS AND THE OLIVE TREE", from Big-Bang to Doomsday scenarios, from bullock cart to NASA's new Scramjet engine powered Hyper-X plane X-43A. I am a silence loving person. I always like to be quiet & prefer to maintain low-key profile. The reason behind this is that I am an introvert. One day, I just told my dear friend about my introvert nature, immediately he replied "There is nothing wrong with it", that moment, I wanted to tell him but I didn't, "Dude, I know that!! And my intention to tell you about it; is not as if I am confessing to a crime, so that you can judge it in terms of Right and Wrong". I just can not abort my thinking process & satisfy my appetite for more & more knowledge & information, I tried that by reasoning myself that not all the things I like to think or know about, have practical impact on my day to day life but in vain, I just couldn't do it. No wonder, now I realize, why do I want to smoke shisha so often or given a choice, get drunk; just to get rid of "active brain" for the some time.
Talking about "Friendship", it is easy to say that I should have learned by now; to make "friendships without discrimination". I think I have, but to a very "little" extent. Even though I am not a very talkative person but sometimes I want to talk to ease the mental pressure built up inside. But what is a friendship when I can not reciprocate? I can not talk about my subjects of interest, while the other person can; I can not talk about my concerns, my daily struggles, my life, while the other person can. I think the very notion of Friendship is based on common interests. My beliefs & subjects of interest are a big part of my life, as they are for most people. If we can not share that common interest, because my conversation falls outside of someone else's comfort zone, then... what is there to base a friendship on? Friendship is a choice which you exercise when it really appeals to your conscience. In common vocal dictionary, we call it as "Frequency Match".
Now when I am reading the entire blog, I want to ask few questions to myself, "Am I a very 'hard to know" kind of a person? "Am I being snobbish?" I don't know but for some strange reasons, the whole character of Andy Dufresne and Red's description of Andy Dufresne in The Shaw shank Redemption "I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him, a walk and a talk that just wasn't normal around here. He strolled. Like a man in a park without a care or worry. Like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place", hits me very hard every time I see that movie. So far I just kept all these things to myself because I always had a trouble of expressing myself vocally by assembling right words at the right moment, I need time to think before I do so, and also because of the presence of more assertive "I am always right" people around me, hence the writing. I know lot of people will be ready with their own theories, judgments and conclusions after reading this blog. You are welcome to put forth your take on this in the form of comments.
