The Meaning of Life

Been a while since I posted something here. Have generally been occupied with something new that caught my fancy. It still has my fancy but nevertheless today, it does not seem to be enough and my thoughts come back to "Does Life have a meaning?"

One distinguished socio scientist once said "Life is meaningless. And it is meaningless that it is meaningless."

These words, though they sound trite, are pretty profound.

For, no matter what theists of whatever religion may say about how we have been born to achieve a greater purpose and our objective should be to attain heaven, or moksha, or nirvaa etc. I have never been able to convince myself of the validity of such a proposition. Personally, I find a lot of things incredible. It is incredible that ours is the only planet which has life. Why is it incredible? Because the probability of our planet being exclusive in any sense other than cartological coordinates has to be 1 in god knows how many million or even billion. But, I am meandering. The point is that, given that we are such low probability events per se, to ascribe a greater meaning to our existence seems to border on sheer megalomania.

Having said that, I would not accord a value judgement to the statement above. Jean Paul Sartre has summed it up beautifully when he said, "I exist, therefore I am". Wishing it away won't change things. And a lot of us who wish life would end tonight (this probably includes myself at some points in time as well), either lack the courage or the energy to bring this situation to pass (believe you me suicide takes a good amount of both!).

The same socio scientist suggested that this lack of meaning is actually good, because it allows you to give it whatever meaning you choose to. Including the one I choose to give it right now which is, that it is a fact that life has no meaning!!!!

Friends

As we go through life we keep gathering friends. And we keep dropping friends. My experience in the latter has been more a sense of drifting apart rather than particularly stopping communication with somebody.

But the process of making friends has been fascinating. Quite often , the friendship has developed out of an instant 'connect' with the person. This is kind of propels both of us closer towards each other. Sometimes, the relationship develops slowly, getting ever deeper as time goes by. Yet other times, a good acquaintance suddenly develops into a deep friendship in a flash. I have had the intense pleasure of seeing all these types of relationships develop with my friends.

I wonder what people seek in any friendship. A lot of my friends have given me a lot without getting anywhere the same kind of reciprocation. Equally I have some friends whom I have given a lot to without getting or expecting any kind of reciprocation. There are also those with whom the give and take continues ceaselessly.

However, the one constant with all friends is that sense of timelessness, of never having lost the thread, of seamlessly continuing from where one had left off.

I think that old internet forward about the guy who swaps pieces of his heart with his friends aptly sums up the relationships I have with mine. All my friends have a piece of my heart and I have one of theirs.

I am truly grateful to all my friends for contributing so richly to my life. I would be incomplete without any of them.

Connects

Everybody has both good times and bad times. Yet it strikes me that the bad times stand out more than the good. This is not to say that for me, times have been more bad than good. Quite the converse in fact. Yet, I seem to have fewer truly memorable good times than I do bad times.

It is a well known fact, especially to people who punt around in the stock markets, that when you lose a little money, it hurts a lot more than making a pile of money makes you feel good.

So is the case with the losing of relationships. Most relationships that is. It is perhaps better at this stage to specify that the word relationship is neither being used as an agglomeration of kinships (family, cousins, etc.) nor as an amorous relationship. Rather it is being used more generically to encompass any sort of connect. This concept of connect is fairly strange. Sometimes people connect in just a fleeting moment. Sometimes, connections are discovered as having evolved over a period of time. To define a connect is not easy. The simplest description perhaps is that if you meet or talk to this person after long intervals, the intervals are irrelevant. These relationships are beautiful in terms of the comfort they offer. And losing such connects is very very disappointing. The sense of loss is not so hard in the sense of making one grieve (like a break up), rather a small dull ache at the back of one's mind, mildly irritating in general to just irritating at its maximum.

For me, this irritation is truly boring because I remember almost all relationships by the good times that one had during such relationships and yearn for them to reconnect again.

Maybe some of them will.

Is a miss as good as a mile?

Recently, my daughter appeared for a couple of competitive examinations. While she did really well, it still looks doubtful whether she will make the cut off for an institute of her choice. This brought to mind an internal debate which has really been with me since childhood.

Is it better to be far away from any dividing line than to just miss by the proverbial whisker. The sense of agony in this situation is sooo much higher as to be unbearable. This is applicable to a losing finalist as well perhaps.

Having been there often enough (the wrong side of the dividing line), I know perhaps more than a lot others how keen the sense of hurt or deprivation is. It does not matter what the lacuna is, be it your own fault, sheer cussed luck, or the other people are simply better than you.

I have also seen people close to me give up trying simply because they cannot bear to be on the wrong side of the line. That did not prevent them from feeling lousy.

I guess it can be best summed up in Charlie Brown's words ; "It does not matter whether you win or you lose.... until you lose!"

The Power of Positive Stroking

One of the few key things I learned in the course of my (too) long career is the power of positive stroking. On more than one occassion, I have been praised for something simple that I have done. The funny part was that, inspite of my knowing that all the positive feedback bestowed on me was far in excess of not only the effort I put in generating what I did, but also the value of the deliverable per se, I ended up walking away with a feeling of incredible warmth in the cockles of my heart.

Cynic that I am, it did not prevent me from questioning the motives of the stroker. However the feeling of warmth still remained.

For me, the lessons from this exercise were twofold viz. Positive stroking works with the smartest of people and secondly, BEWARE of positive stroking.

Anger

How many of us have experienced white flashes of anger which make us want to strike out at the nearest thing available with no regard for sensibilities or consequences? A feeling that is always hovering around, preventing us from doing anything else?

A lot of people believe that such situations are best avoided for our own good as such fits are indeed defocusing and debilitating. While I would agree with this belief at large, one would acknowledge that notwithstanding all ones care, such situations do come to pass. What then should one do in those circumstances?

People say yoga because it helps calm us down and allow us to think calmly. I tend to disagree. I believe that if (and this is a caveat) such anger is caused by extreme provocation, it has to be channeled and used in order to neutralise the same.

I firmly believe in the adage "Don't just get mad, get even." In order to ensure that this objective is met, I will nurture the anger, ensure it does not die out. This will enable me to meet my objective with a passion which is often necessary to make things happen.

The Ironies of Depression

Going through a depression is not perhaps the best thing that could happen to anybody. It perhaps affects different people differently. For me it manifests itself in some sort of scream in my head urging me alternately to feel terribly sorry for myself and to lash out at whatever seems at hand. Reflecting on interactions with friends who have been through such experiences would seem to suggest they feel similarly.



It is often said that one of the best ways to pull oneself out of a depression is to talk about it and take it out. However, this is far easier said than done. Depression would arise from a sense of dissatisfaction with the world and an inadequacy to deal with the cause of such dissatisfaction. How does one tell anybody about such inadequacy then? If you tell your friends, you worry that they will think less of you (most friends wouldn't, but that is not the point). If you tell a professional, that is tantamount to admitting to the whole world that something is wrong with you (something is, but that is not the point either).



Another reason for not talking about depression is the cynical view that talking about it is not going to change things and make the cause of the depression vanish. This is partially true; in fact, this is so in most cases. In a few rare instances, depression is brought about by misunderstandings. I know one instance of somebody going into depression because she was told by her lover that her beauty was not the reason he loved her. It took him a while to get her out of that depression. Superficially, it seems surprising because everyone wants to be loved for more than their physical attributes which are transient (botox, liposuction, and all other tools notwithstanding). Nevertheless, it can be horrifyingly real and yours truly too has had minor fits because some such trivia was overlooked.



Another characteristic of depressions seem to be mood swings. There are times when one gets elevated out of such a sense only to return not only more determinedly, but also deeper into a state of depression. This sensation is almost like receiving an enema (currently called "colon hydrotherapy"). The pressure seems to build and build till it becomes almost unbearable and then suddenly it subsides. Only to build up again (and harder) as another part of the intestine fills up with water.. till it can fill a third segment.



The enema is actually a good way to rationalise the framework for talking out. Releasing the water has a tremendous cathartic effect (without any pun here really). The after effects of such catharsis are truly beneficial. As a useless aside, one of the most avid practitioners of the enema was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (why can I not call him Mahatma?). However, if the water is not let out, the intestine could could burst and cause the person a lot of damage.


This rambling is partially a rattle to everybody (myself included) to take out the angst from your mind before it blows it up. Partially it is also part of the process of catharsis. And having said that, writing and/ or talking about such things do not change them. Action is needed. This just acts to lower the requirements for the energy of activation (is the chemical term surfactant?).

A topic to write

The problem with blogging is that one is always writing for others to read rather than whatever jumble of thoughts that tumbles out of one's mind. Those thoughts have to be ordered so that they become readable, edited so that nobody's sensibilities are affected (incidentally, the grammar here is interesting, nobody is almost clearly singular whereas sensibilities are plural, {have you heard of a sensibility?}), and censored so that one's own privacy is maintained.

The sentence above is a clear example of what I mean (and if it is not, then my point only gets underlined further!).

So, what does one write about? Love? Religion? Cynicism? How does one classify one's thoughts into this kind of order?

But lets take a topic to write about. Let me give you, gentle reader, my take on rituals.

In today's age, rituals appear pretty meaningless. In fact in one of my own earlier musings, I had mocked one such ritual. However, one does need to take a look at why such rituals may have come into being.

If we examine ourselves in detail, we would notice the development of certain habits within us. The formalisation of such habits is rituals. On a bigger scale, rituals helped people pass time when there was no radio or tv or internet (or blogging for that matter). So you do a set of things on Diwali (to suggest a common festival). The set of things you do may be different (from taking an oil bath in Tamil Nadu to playing cards in Punjab.

A classic example of rituals is the practice of 'japa' where one repeatedly does something like say 100 hail mary's or vishnu sahasranama etc. The act of such litany is to force focus on the ritual itself. What this does is clear other thoughts out of your mind giving it rest and rejuvenation. In short, Hail Mary is better than Bloody Mary!!!!!

How to cure yourself of positive thinking

Somebody generally sent me a forward about 212 degrees. The gist of the story was that at 211 degrees (F), water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water comes steam. And with steam you can power a train. A wag commented, "That is all fine, but before you reach 212 degrees, you have to reach 211. There is no point in being so gung ho about the 212th degree if you do not have the capacity to reach 211.

In my opinion, entirely too much is made out of positive thinking. You cannot become an Olympic runner merely by thinking positively about it. In the first place you have to have serious talent. After that, you have to work had to hone that talent into a skill. Then you need luck (or perhaps an OBC certificate). THEN perhaps you may get to be an Olympic runner.

Come to think of it, this argument is not really so bad. Look at it this way. If EVERYBODY wanted to be an olympic runner and EVERYBODY thought positively, what would happen? Your talent and fitness etc would come into play right?

Then, is positive thinking bad? Not entirely I feel (notwithstanding my blogspot page title). It is a known fact that a feeling of goodness about oneself generally helps one work hard at whatever one wants provided it is in measured doses. If one goes about with the mindset that nothing is going to come out of whatever you thought of doing, then you will do nothing and nothing will come out.

Loneliness

One thing that has always struck me is that a lot of people are lonelier than they think. I remember one interaction I had with a kid on a chat site (I was 37, she was 19) where I proposed that chat is the abode of the lonely. She refuted it saying that it was just another form of entertainment akin to reading, watching movies and what have you. I then asked her why she chatted rather than read or watch movies. She countered saying that it was more interactive. And then.... the penny dropped and she said "Maybe you are not THAT dumb"!!!

But, coming back to loneliness, we find ourselves at our most lonely when things appear to be going not so great for us. And less lonely at times of great pleasure or joy. I tend to disagree. At times of great pleasure or joy, nobody is going to have the exact amount of joy that you do. And you will find that other people's willingness to listen to you harp on about your great joy suddenly drops off exponentially. And here you are, with this tremendous bubble swelling within you and nowhere to ease the pressure... ergo loneliness. And this can be as frustrating as during lows.

It is easy to blame others for leaving you alone when you are low. But think about it, when you are low, it is because of some inadequacy in you (that is another of my pet theories; at the end of the day, you are responsible for everything that happens to you). Even if you call it bad luck, it is merely a theory of UNfulfillment of expectations. YOUR expectations. Under these circumstances, it is hard to have a sense of togetherness when one has to concede one's inadequacy to meet the circumstances to yourself first, and then to others who want to share these bad times with you.

I am not saying that loneliness is bad or undesirable or desirable. What I am saying is that it is inevitable.

Starting my own Blog

For a long time, I have been resisting the idea of setting up a blog. For one, I am not confident of my ability to gather up a string of coherent thoughts which could give anybody any pleasure to read. I still doubt I have any. However, this place struck me as a good outlet for the violent storm of thoughts that is my (what one may call) a mind.

Having lived more than half (by all probabilities) my life, my mind is a mixture of pleasures at milestones attained, disappointments at those missed, wonder at where one has reached today in terms of the dreams one had as a child, anguish at the knowledge of a physically failing body (inevitably), an incredible desire to die while in full control of one's faculties combined with a childish perversion to watch the world after my death...

Readers, enter at your own peril because these thoughts are disturbing, yet fascinating insofar as it goes to show how convoluted one's thought process can become.