First, there was a bang
Then there were sounds
and some intellect
Then came interpretation

Sounds evolved into words
bound by grammar
beautified by Literature
Then came contexts

Meanings change with contexts
Mixed with emotions
Gave birth to confusion
Then came utter chaos

To deeply understand
oneself and one another
the only thing necessary
is comfort in SILENCE

When you walk down the shopping street and see a variety of products on display, do we end up buying all of them? There are some products that we are not interested in. There are some products we wonder who buys them at all. And then there are some that we are fascinated with.

Even from the ones that we are fascinated with, we end up picking only a chosen few.

Similarly, we human beings are such products on display. There are impressionable minds that are out there shopping. By impressionable minds, I don’t necessarily mean the young ones. It includes everyone. Depending on the context and time and space of their lives, they will look for people with certain attributes. The ones that they like to hang around with are the products that they are fascniated with.

So our words and actions offer choices. The minute the impressionable minds start to make their choices based on our words and actions, we’ve turned ‘Influencer’. Hence, it is very important to use our words and actions very responsibly.

Mind you, the onus of making the choice and the responsibility of results from that choice always stays with the respective individual. But it does have an impact on the ‘Influencer’ as well. If the person is successful, our brand value as an ‘influencer’ goes up. If they do not succeed, it could have a different result.

So who are we really? We are simply choices on offer. Whether we stay on display or get picked up will be a direct result of the ‘Choices’ we make. Wishing you all the best choices in 2020.

The “New Year’ comes in with all the excitement
Almost like a teenaged lover

January woos it with renewed energy
Coaxes it to go ahead and discover
Jogs along and works out hard
But the romance fizzles out and it is all over

Along comes February
Blessed by St. Valentine
The wooing falls ‘short’ of expectations
And it literally runs out of time

March marches in with a frenzy
Of colours and the warmth of Holi
Turns out it is pure infatuation
And the idea of matrimony seems unholy

Then ‘Springs’ April with the ultimate symbol of Love
The Fragrance of the colourful flowers
Midway realizes the pledged allegiance
To the other calendar(s) and higher powers

A bit dejected and feeling the heat
Wondering what may happen with ‘May’
The exhaustion and humidity
Makes the romance a damp squib anyway

With a parched feeling
It longingly looks at June
Does bring in some respite
With light showers and a melody to croon

July literally “washes” those feelings away
Like a bully OR almost a goon
Floods all over the place with overwhelming emotions
Throwing everything and everyone out of tune

The August person brings in
The Remover of obstacles
With a serene and saintly connect
And Love too but it feels all ‘Paradoxical’

September charges in the much needed change
A festive fervour that dances away into the nights
Causing one too many a love bites
Along with a debate of wrongs and rights

October and November engages in fights
For rights over the festival of Lights
But they develop cold feet
They fall short of being the Shining Knight

After all the courting and attempts
Memory flashes and fades away like an ember
Almost like a pre-decided swift action
The Year grows old and simply elopes with December

Is collateral damage inevitable? Or have we simply accepted it to be so?
Why should collateral be accepted?

Sample this…
In the Ramayana, when the episode of Hanuman setting the Golden Lanka on fire is narrated, has anyone thought about the owners of the property that was damaged? Not all was owned by Ravana himself. In an ego clash between Hanuman (on behalf of Rama – it was not even his personal business to begin with) and Ravana, the common man had to pay the price. Assuming the King compensated for the loss, why should they have gone through that in the first place?

In the clash between The Kauravas and The Pandavas, the whole of Hastinapur and the allied kingdoms suffered. For what? An ego clash between Duryodhana and Draupadi? Despite the versions and various retellings, this aspect has never been discussed. At least I haven’t read about it or heard about it.

In today’s world, what has really changed? Our stories are full of inflated ego and the clash between the protagonist and the antagonist. Eventually good wins over evil. But not without collateral damage.
Look at the political scenario around. And expand it to any level your imagination lets you to. You will see that this acceptance of collateral has NOT changed.
Why have we accepted it so easily? Is it culturally embedded in us? Or have these stories glorified the violence to the extent that we have completely ignored the collateral comfortably?

How can we let any individual or set of individuals take control of lives other than his/hers and then also justify it? When I say lives, not necessarily with life itself but other aspects of life as well.
Something’s horribly twisted in us as the audience to such stories or as a community.
To the extent that no one even gives these a second thought.

Maybe it’s time to revisit this aspect. Maybe we introspect ourselves from a different perspective.

Fear is an emotion
Fear is an apprehension
Fear is a challenge
To our status quo

Fear can be tamed
Fear can be used
Fear can be the fuel
To soar and to let go

Fear can feed
Fear can pay heed
Fear can kick us
To help us grow

Fear is a necessary evil
“Fear is just another tool
of a Man-made Devil” **
So long as we all know

** This quote is written by Napolean Hill

I’ve always had an inner conflict going on about the merits and demerits of ‘Competition’. Is there a thing called ‘Healthy Competition’? This conflict arose because deep inside I was never comfortable with competition.

Maybe because, Competition is fuelled by comparison. Comparison comes from a place of ‘insecurity’.

What if he or she is better than me? Will he/she grab the opportunity that could have otherwise be mine? Will people like him/her more than me? Will my value diminish? Will I be forgotten?

To stay afloat in all these scenarios, we end up competing. And in a competition, typically one wins and the other loses. In other words, you will always have a ‘Victim’ in this scenario.

Whereas the better way is instilling a sense of “Quest for Excellence”.

Quest for excellence in a subject or task or activity can be used as a fuel for personal excellence as well. This will do well for identifying interests and/or channelling the energy into the right area of interests. Quest for excellence comes from the place of confidence.

It feeds quality rather than quantity. There is no insecurity here.

And in this quest, there are no losers. You win individually as well as a Team.

In other words, here you will have only ‘Victors’ in this scenario.

Typically, in an organization there is competition to find the best team or the best performer.

Despite there being different departments and/or teams, each one will force fake the criteria to claim the winner’s position. Is that criteria relevant for the organization or for the members themselves? No one is sure and even if it is, for how long? And while you will end up having one winner, you will have so many others who are disheartened. More so of the ‘process of selecting a winner’ than to that of ‘losing’ itself.

Now that’s a double whammy. The losing person(s) / team(s) may lose interest or feel demotivated. Result is exact opposite of what was originally intended in the first place.

Instead what if we look at all the different departments and teams with varied tasks and set them on a quest for excellence? They don’t need to compete on the same parameters. They may choose one area within their domain and set a benchmark for themselves and strive to achieve it. A panel can decide if the threshold is sufficiently high enough. And then one either achieves it or not. But there would be efforts. And the ones who succeed, win and you raise the bar higher for the next time. You may end up winning on many fronts and not have a situation where all are competing on uni-dimensional criteria.

It’s a ‘Win-Win’ situation for all, the individuals, the teams and the organization. We will have only “Victors” and no “Victims”.

Three ways to simplify your life

• Always ask yourself        you are doing whatever you are doing?
• Don’t let your emotional remote control in other’s hands &
• If distracted, meditate to remind yourself the answer to the 1st question 

While meditating, you may use the below technique.

For all the actions you did or words you uttered during the day, ask yourself these questions and be as truthful to yourself as possible.

Did I do it to suppress any of my feelings / fear?

Did I do it to Impress others?

Did I do it to impress myself?

Did I do it to express myself?

The journey of your answers MUST dig deeper below the surface.

So long as you are not just above the surface, it’s good.

The answer has been out there. For eternity.
Many must have found it before me and / or must be close to deciphering it.
For me, I got the answer during my morning walk.
In solitude, yes. But not in a meditative pose or under a specific tree or any such cliché.

Without much ado – The answer is…
Between our first breath and last breath – Life is all about the ‘choices’ we make and the consequences of those very choices. Nothing more, nothing less.

The more informed our choices are, the more predictable our consequences can be.
There is still an element of unpredictability but that could get negligible with practice and attention.

How much we invest in making our choices a ‘Conscious’ and a ‘Well-informed’ one is what matters the most.
Each consequence of the past choices made, presents itself with a few more choices to be made at every junction. This works at both, macro level and at a micro level.

At a ‘MACRO’ level, the possibility to exercise ‘our’ true choice ‘at all times’ is called ‘Freedom’.
If you are in a situation where you are forced to make some choices, they are also the direct consequences of some misinformed choices you might’ve made in the past.
Yet again, at this junction, you may choose to play victim OR accept this as a consequence of a mis-informed choice and NOW make an informed/conscious choice to get out of that situation at least for a brighter tomorrow.

At a ‘micro’ level, the choice to respond or react to a certain situation can be exercised.
We are thankfully equipped with a few basic tool-kit of emotions.
The point is we must use the right tool for the right job/situation.
If we make an incorrect choice of tool here, such choices will also have consequences.
Although at a ‘micro’-level, continuous incorrect choices made here WILL affect the ‘MACRO’ too.

So – that’s pretty much it. Life is all about ‘choices’.
Now, you are left with a choice to either
1) Accept this thought OR
2) Rubbish this thought.
Obviously, this choice will also have its own consequences.

The real question is: How informed are you about this choice you’re going to make?

 

Emotions, feelings and thoughts are all man-made. So are the results and side-effects of each combination(s) of such emotions. They are displayed by two or more individuals in a given situation. Statistically speaking there may be a finite number to such reactions, but with us humans, especially when imagination is added as a catalyst, the possibilities are infinite.

And as someone said, kids have imaginary friends while adults have imaginary enemies. With a preconceived notion and/or bias, the results can only be lethal – on our physique OR our psyche.

What fuels these emotions, feelings and thoughts?

Let’s take an empty beaker. Pour in 20 oz. of chemical ‘A’. The beaker will simply carry the chemical. What happens to that chemical if left like that for a period of time – would depend on the room temperature. The chemical “A” may react differently to warm/hot temperature and or cool/cold temperature. In any of the above given situation let’s introduce another 20 oz. of chemical “B”. Reaction begins. These reactions could keep changing – depending on the changing room temperature and/or quantity of these chemicals – say we introduced 15 oz. or 30 oz. instead of 20 oz.

When we are born, we are all empty beakers. The room temperature is the eco-system we are brought up in and the thought processes of our friends and relatives are the chemicals that get added at different times and dozes. Our reactions keep changing. These are what fuels our emotions, feelings and thoughts.

What gets reflected in a mirror or gets captured in a “cctv” without audio could be as close to events “as-is” but its uni-dimensional. However, reality probably cannot be confined into dimensions. At least not as we define it. Because there is so much more to life than just Homo Sapiens and our needs and greed.

So, there is “Reality; As-is” and there are versions and interpretations of reality which, people claim as truth and/or reality. The funny part is – People tend to fight and kill over their respective beliefs of reality.

On a completely different tangent, I finally got my answer to the question I’ve been asking myself –  If granted, what super-power would I like to have? OR What would be MY Super-Power?

The answer is – The power of least resistance (in pure-play physical form) OR in other words, the power of flexibility and adaptability (at an emotive level).

To explain, if one punches you and you stand there like a rock, no matter how strong you are, you will be hurt. At least – somewhat. But more than the physical hurt, at an emotional level, you will be devastated that someone even thought of punching you. So, at a physical level, I’d like to have the ability to not just dodge but beat and break the speed of the fist so that there is ‘NO’ impact and at an emotional level, I need to adapt to the other person’s emotive state and simply move on. Meaning, I need to accept that we’ve led the situation to a point where the other person is having to throw a fist at me or hurl abusive language.

In the movie, “The Matrix”, Neo asks Morpheus – “If I’m ‘The One’, can I dodge bullets?” To which, Morpheus responds, “When you realize you’re The One, you won’t have to dodge bullets”.

If I have this super-power, I’ll be close to accepting and acknowledging the “Reality; As-is” state. There’ll be no resistance to ideas or ideologies. Thus, resulting in no conflict and learn to simply ‘BE’

Do you wish to have this super-power? Do you think it is ridiculous to not believe in something and take a stand? Do you think this is what others call Nirvana / enlightenment? Well, it all depends on the contents and conditions of your Beaker.