A light in the darkness

When I wrote this topic today, everything talked about imperfection. This mental battle between perfectionism and imperfectionism made me understand that we are at the wrong end. Let me clarify what I really mean by this. When you go to school, does your teacher expect you to master everything on day one? The answer is no. For this reason only, assessments are towards the end of the term. I remember my brother and sister joining the drawing class. They are good artists because they have worked on it for ages, and I never did, so I am still imperfect in it.  I still remember the days when I went to do machine embroidery. My teacher first said to make straight, concentric circles without stopping. The first day was, oh! Nothing was going well. Not even one line was straight. This is where we all are. We begin with imperfection. We were three people there, learning. All were my senior madams, and I was the junior most. We all practiced every alternate day. After a few days, my circles w

When I thought of writing about the game of materialism that plays in our lives, I was immediately drawn to one of the English stories I read, ' The umbrella man ' by Roald Dhal. For all who have forgotten this story, I will give a quick recap. This story talks about a girl and her mother who visited a dentist. While they were returning, it was raining, and they were waiting for a cab when they were approached by an old man. This man asked for a favor by requesting $20 as a taxi fare in lieu of the silk umbrella he had. The mother was usually suspicious of strangers. So she used her first golden rule: "The nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become." This old man was really nice because he was polite, well-spoken, and well-dressed. He was really a gentle man. She knew this because her mother used her second golden rule to access it: "You can always spot a gentleman by the shoes he wears." (This is the reason I picked this story.) The stor

Why am I talking about masks and labels? I do not wear one.  Let us explore. Sociology studies man in his social environment. It says that man has many roles to play when he is inhabiting this earth. He acts like a father, son, husband, manager, leader, etc. He is not just one person but many in one. What is this?  Let me introduce you to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his take on the various roles we play. He says that we are not born as a blank slate where we can write anything. He introduced the concept of archetypes . Archetypes are a universal, inborn eidolon of a person, their behaviors and personalities that ultimately influence their behavior. In short, it is the innate human knowledge that is transferred from our ancestors. One such archetype is  "persona," which means mask. He elaborates, saying that persona is the way we present ourselves to the world, i.e., the innumerable social masks we don among various groups and situations. Over time, we get so stuck in th

We are all quite well versed in the benefits of information technology in our lives. Isn't it? So I will directly jump into how we hide from ourselves using information technology.  Planning to write about this topic drew me to one of the most famous practices I have heard: "When you get up in the morning, we should  see our palms first. " This had been our ritual for ages. Do you all remember this? I can hear a faint no.  Around fifteen years ago, when I had a dumb phone, my usual ritual was to get up, pray, meditate, reflect on the day, get energized, and begin the day. This practice has helped me a lot to keep myself calm and composed, and at the same time, it has always helped me to connect to myself. Without fail, I used to do this every day, but now my day begins with WhatsApp, Google, and Youtube. Even after checking messages, I do sit for prayer and meditation; my eyes are always on the phone, and just one popup and my heart beating, 'What's the message?&#

We all hear you repent for your sins, and they will be forgiven. We all plan to dip in the Ganges and wash away our sins.  I began my post with these words because, somewhere within, we all feel we are not always right. Our inner conscience had been at work to check our action records and certify whether we were right or wrong. The word guilt is not new to us. The Merriam-Webster  dictionary  defines it as: the fact of  having committed a breach of conduct, especially violating the law and involving a penalty; the state of one who has  committed an offense, especially consciously. So, in our guilt, we have committed either a breach or an offense that calls for punishment.  I was hastily walking on the railway platform as I arrived late to board my train, and I struck an old lady who fell down. Here, it was my mistake, due to which the other person suffered. So, I feel guilty for hurting this old lady. I stop by there, comfort her, and say sorry to her to express my infelt regret for

Today, I will open my conversation with Noel Fielding's quote:  "Reality depresses me, and I need to find fantasy worlds to escape them." We are all in this one or the other day. The real thing makes us mad and overwhelms us. Many times, we find it hard to take and feel we are on the verge of breaking down. Am I right or not? Let me emphasize this with an example. I remember my school days when we had to read a whole book for exams. It was really tiring and stressful. At times, I used to feel that the lives of dogs and cats were much better than mine because they did not have to study. I used to wish I was born like them during my exams. This was my way of running away from reality by fantasizing about my world. So, all the while, I was dreaming of being a dog, which gave me much relaxation over the overwhelming stress that was pressing on me. The main illusion of all these voluntary fantasies is that we are in control of the external event. I think Richard Ricks words ca

We are all aware of what it means to be a failure. Right. When we fail, we all feel low, dejected, and even incapable for a while, but after this initial phase of failure, we try to find out ways to encourage ourselves to fight this failure and fathom it. For example, I still remember my first day when I pricked my friend to draw blood. It did not come, and she was feeling so much pain. Fear struck me about whether I would do it or not. A small corner in my brain has woven beautiful stories of failures and is saying to me constantly: "You cannot do it.  You are not capable of it.  See, your syringe failed to prick the nerve, so there was no blood.  Leave it. It is not your cup of tea.  First, learn better, then focus on the practical. You are useless." Later on, my friend, who herself was good at these, taught me how to find veins and then prick and collect blood. I could do it myself as well. This only happened because I did not submit to the lies that were rumbling in my he

 We are all familiar with forgetting.  The fight that you had with your friend ruined your friendship. You just want to erase it from your memory. The guilt of not being able to take good care of your parents sucks you up, and so you don't want to remember. War veterans often face PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and find it difficult to live a normal life. They earnestly seek a delete button to put an end to all raging and haunting memories. There are many such small, yet painful, memories that we do not want to remember. So, we find that forgetting has a pretty good track record of maintaining peace and harmony in our lives. These reminds me of Fredrich Nietzsche words: "Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all." School days are another example. Sitting in the examination hall and stressing a lot to remember what I studied on that page to grab 10 marks. In the cultural evening, "I forgot my dialogue seeing the big crowd" is not uncommon.

The fast-paced life we have chosen steals every quality that makes us whole. Peace is the first of them all. Under its shade, life is beautiful. In the whole of my life, I only heard people say, I have to do this, I have no time to rest, etc. No one ever mentions that I need to focus on my peace. Over time, I too became a jerk like that.  If you are in the right place, you have peace. If you are doing this right, you will have calmness. If you know what you have to do, you don't need to shout to get things executed; rather, you will patiently direct your subordinates so that the job is done successfully. Nowhere did you need to be arrogant. This clearly shows that we wear the mask of arrogance to hide something. Let us explore the hidden nature of arrogance. At this point, I would like to quote the words of an anonymous author:   "Arrogance requires advertisement. Confidence speaks for itself."   We are arrogant because we want people to see us as I have portrayed us

I still remember my first journey on a plane. I traveled by train from Chandigarh to Kolkata. Then, from there, I reached Dum-Dum airport. All these events gave me goosebumps because I was anxious about how I would do them all for the first time. I had never been to the airport that time. Thinking about doing something for the first time sent currents of nervousness all through my body.  We all have met this friend called anxiety, or let me put it up as nervousness. It means an apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness, usually over an impending or anticipated illness. It is a normal response to a stressful situation. Anxiety is not always bad. A little bit of stress that makes you anxious is inevitable, but that is a good thing. This healthy anxiety pushes you to accomplish your goals and meet the challenges of daily life. This anxiety introduces you to the fears that want to pull you down. Here I will quote Emma Stone's thoughts on anxiety: "Anxiety is something that is part of

I have discussed with you all our means of using addiction as a way of hiding from our inner selves. There, I mentioned the other three agents: ambition, arrogance, and anxiety. In this post, I will connect dreams to ambitions and how they act as a hiding niche for me and you.  Let me start this discussion by distinguishing between dream and ambition. Dreams, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, are a strongly desired goal or purpose. So we dream to become something; we dream to achieve a goal; we dream to be big. This is the first stage of creativity or achievement. A dream alone cannot become real. We need to take intentional actions in the direction of fulfilling our dreams, and then only we can see it happen. Terri Kozlowaski sums it up like this: Dream +  Ambition  = Reality There is no harm in dreaming big. In fact, sometimes we should dream big to achieve big. The real game begins when we choose the kind of ambition to achieve it. Bandura (1993) , a Canadian-American ps

Though the book considers complacency and certainness with the same angle as I was exploring to write this topic, a new insight struck my mind. I will incorporate my insight with the knowledge I gained from the book. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines complacency as self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies. To be satisfied is a good and healthy sign, but to choose self-satisfaction over growth is not at all worthy. So, I called this kind of complacency cunning, i.e., full of deceit and craftiness. I am poor, and I earn less. In this situation, being satisfied with rice, dal, and potatoes is a healthy and good sign. Now, this poor person says to herself, I can earn no more than this, so let me settle with this begging and live forever in poverty. Our lazy spirit is demonizing us to fix at this begging only. Such complacencies do not allow us to explore our real selves; rather, they say we are good where we are. I will cite the e

This topic is of great interest to me, and I am very good at it.  I'll start with the quote the author referenced, as it prompted me to revisit a crucial aspect of my life, leading me to recognize my tendency towards incessant busyness. The author began this chapter on busyness with these words: "Staying on the treadmill means we avoid pausing long enough to face the truth about why we’re running so hard." We all do this. Isn't it? When we encounter an unwanted colleague, we turn our backs and continue doing the thing we were doing without noticing him or her. I was traveling on a train when I happened to see an uncle of mine with whom I did not want to talk, so I pretended to sleep. Another amusing instance of my busyness was when I'd tell people that I had crucial tasks to attend to, which were interrupted because they called me. Instead, I could have simply smiled, excused myself, and explored the various places available to me.Instead