My days of Dilemma - My path to Realization

I have a pretty clear idea about what my aim is in all the small interactions I have with other human beings out of my circle. To stay disconnected enough to avoid them from affecting me, unless it is someone I care about in which case I try to get them out of their misery if they let me, cause I can’t bear their suffering. This clear idea is not because I am socially awkward or something but because I believe that my happiness is my priority. And I have a very clear idea about when I am happy. The reason I avoid interaction with the other people is that they do not know what their happiness is and this renders them irrelevant and even destructive.

A persons’ philosophy is simply his principles and how he derives them. It is not just a vague theory subject which can get you a degree. It is what one believes and what one doesn’t. What one values. What one considers friendship, love and how one approaches the world. It is ones idea of what constitutes good, bad, ugly or irrelevant. And a very important WHY for all the what’s and how’s. The ground work. The basics. Everyone has an idea about this though it is not put into words usually. It is a simple enough concept. But most never have the patience, and sometimes courage, to think about it.

Many reasonable people can answer the what’s and how’s. Many can’t. But the key word in the above paragraph is the uppercase why. You can’t just give a why not or something to that affect there - that would be saying I don’t know why. You must understand the question at hand, decide its merits and virtues, decide its applicability to you, and then decide whether you accept it or not. And you must decide by your own cognition and reasoning capability. That is the only way to answer the why. And that is how you are sure. The key word in here is you. You must reason and decide.

Though I am not an expert, I’ve got a basic understanding of philosophy because I did not have it by birth and I desperately needed it at one point in life to avoid becoming a slave to the hypocritical society like most people around me. More than a point, it was a phase. I was hypocritical as everyone else, I was conflicted. I did not know whom to believe. I was better off than most at my age because I at least knew what everyone thought was right was not right. But I did not have the why. So I was somewhat doing what everyone was doing with a question mark attitude. This part of my life can be called ‘dilemma’ which had the following characteristics:

1. I was valuing what everyone valued.
2. There was no formula in my thought process to determine what was virtuous, right or wrong. My answers were always hesitant and somewhere in between. I was afraid of taking a stand. I could not judge clearly for myself and ended up feeling guilty whenever I was compelled to decide.
3. I went along believing sacrifice and charity was the ultimate goal of life.
4. I was thinking that happiness of others was my happiness.
5. I just thought beggars were very very unfortunate people who deserved to get money from others for survival. Just like I was thinking that socialism was not bad.
6. I was thinking that inefficiency is all right as long as a person is good natured and basically harmless.
7. I thought keeping in touch with hundreds of people was important. Though I never actually got myself to do it.
8. I felt guilty when I am doing something for my pleasure. Though that did not stop me.
9. I felt proud when doing something which I did not have a vested interest in even though I had no idea why I was doing it.
10. I was sometimes caring about people though deep inside I knew I could never care about them. Because I did not know why I shouldn’t care for them.
11. I was faking concern about things that did not concern me for the sake of sanction of others.
12. And even though I always knew concept of god was superfluous and the way to ruins, I was not clear on the why.

Then somehow, I started reading The Fountainhead and I knew this was the answer. This was right. And I started down this path. Now I don’t hesitate anymore to take a call. I actually know what I believe and why.

Dilemma

It’s another of the thousands of unsuspecting Sunday mornings passing by me.  The plan is to study an approximate of 10 hours so that I can complete a CFA subject out of the many others pending to be completed before the starting of this December. So how does that go? I wake up at 11 in the morning only to be too bored to study, I spend time on music and stuff till lunch time and then relax. Quite a messed up start for such high aspirations. Question, should I eat?

Eating is a sin now. I’ll sleep on the dining table itself if I eat my mother’s masala meat curry with steam rice. But I am too hungry. Resistance sounds really cool advising someone. But I can’t study hungry right! And I can’t study sleeping either. Maybe I’ll eat too little to get sleepy but just enough to ward off the starvation. But its Sunday, its mutton! Oh the dilemma..

The sixty seventh independence day - as no one else is counting

Just got this off my fb page: This happens to be the 67^th Independence day of India. Disclaimer: this was an Economic Times update on my fb – so buyer beware.

Truly we are running out of numbers. Last I remembered, people were going crazy about the half century figure but India is batting faster than Sachin after he completes his fifty. Wait, what’s my age now? Never mind.

So I was thinking why so much fuss about Independence day and its celebration. It’s quite funny to see people upload flags to their profiles to convince themselves that they still are patriotic. I could point it out to them, but then I’ll have no one to laugh at. When I think that the concept of nation is about its geography and borders as I read in the inaccurate geography text books in my high school, the illogical social text books in my high school correct me to say that the concept of a nation is its people and culmination of all the cultures it has accumulated when it was in slavery of the kings or whites, or bureaucrats later (I made that up, the text book doesn’t have the wisdom to say it).

Well, if it’s only about borders and spaces, there is no point in feeling sentimental about it. If it is about people, culture and all the crap that it comes with, the bottom line is the same. It’s more hypocritical than foolish and either ways, no need to feel attached and sentimental about it. I, for one, am starting to get allergic to  people and their stupid notions specifically because they restrict MY independence for the sake of something they are not sure they believe in.

The only good thing is that it is a public holiday. But even that’s got an angle. It’s a dry day (again, this info is not from an accurate source and I am too uninterested to google)

You want us to celebrate by holding it dry? I repeat: hypocrites.

Drunk

Here’s to hoping my parents would never find out, never cared about any others who would be interested to find out.

Exactly in the middle of two full bottles of mansion house, I decide to write about how it feels when completely drunk. Before that, I must confess that I am not totally out, so this may not be a truly accurate portrait.

 You suddenly are not afraid of consequences, you want to change wrongs and replace them with rights. You stop thinking about losing your job and think about what ifs. You don’t care what your bosses would say about the faults only they can find. You feel that you are better than them. You don’t care about the years of ambition or the lifetime of frustrations. Your mind spins, or stops spinning, and you feel the calm you haven’t felt the whole week of doing productive work. A bit of comfort, as the wait is over, the wait for the week to be over with and the break to begin. You forget about what you never remembered, but never got to push out of the borders of your mind either – the irrelevant. The Saturday and Sunday of life with your best friends and a raw peg.

The song playing on speakers ‘And nothing else matters’