why oh why!

Everything around is still, peaceful? no not possible, still never actually corresponds to peaceful. If it was, I would have used a fancier adjective. I want to speak out, scream out, pour it all out. Isn't that what it was supposed to be like!? I want to, I so want to, but I hold back. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of persuasion, but that is how its supposed to be. Its funny, its all very ironic, sometimes I feel what goes around comes around, and that is why its all happening. Again an irony, since when did I believe in the cliches of the world! Stillness around, screaming inside, cry for help, but is help really needed!? Traces of the once strong mind lingers around for a minute, then taken over by waves of new found agony. Is it just an illusion!!? Am I hallucinating, because its nothing, after all everything is still there, nothing is lost. Why is it so still then, why is there a lump, why cant I scream everything out, why should I hold it all in, why do I say it only to myself. It hurts, more so because of unknown pain, unforeseen agony. I stop thinking about it, think of something else, but it seems to have seeped in through every vein, every artery, every cell in the body, there seems to be no escaping it. Again, its not lost yet, far from it! But I can talk only to myself, why cant I let it out, may be there will be peace again, may be everything would not be so unmercifully still around me....

beware!

Well here I go again wondering what is life after all. I mean is there a pattern to everything that happens in life!? Religions say when you have a bad time its god's way of testing you, and when you have a good time its god's way of rewarding you. They say everything happens for a reason. Say a cheat leads a long healthy life and a supposed good person dies early, people have ways of explaining that too, and when you cant really figure it out, they just say who are we to question god's will, and we are just humans, how can we understand god's mind, and so on. If you look around, there are so many many humans, countless. There are people dying every minute. In any given natural disaster or bomb blast etc, there are tens of thousands of people washed out in a matter of seconds or minutes! Thousands who wont even be accounted for, and thousands who nobody really realizes to be gone. Does every single of these deaths have a meaning and purpose to it!? Then there are the slums and street people, people die, people just run off, beggars who dont have a history or a future, kids being born every minute, unwanted, not cared for, and most of them eventually die the same way, unlike movies where they find something extraordinary. Then there are war torn and troubled countries, afghanistan, iraq, african nations etc, people starve to death, epidemics wiping out thousands and lakhs, war wiping out entire family/village/town/city, people never found, bodies never recovered, do all these deaths have a purpose, does every human life individually have a purpose, a destination!? Hard to believe! Its more like swatting flies or stamping ants. Its just that the fly doesnt realize this, it goes on living life the way it knows, and humans go on living life thinking their every action is accounted for by someone, and their every deed is going to fetch them something at the end, little do they know that someone might just use a bug(human) balm, or stamp them any second!

Humour, philosophy, whatever :)

• I would not know whatThe spirit of a philosopher might wish more to beThan a good dancer.

• It is nobler to declare oneself wrongThan to insist on being right - especially when one is right.

• In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

• Is man one of God's blunders?Or is God one of man's blunders?

• Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes

• The true man wants two things: danger and play.For that reason he wants woman,As the most dangerous plaything.

• There cannot be a God Because if there were one,I could not believe that I was not He.

• Two great narcotics: alcohol and Christianity.

• We love life, Not because we are used to livingBut because we are used to loving.

• The happiest moment of the happy manIs that of his falling asleep,Just as the unhappiest moment of the unhappy manIs that of his waking.

• We cannot put off living until we are ready...Life is fired at us point-blank.

• I don't know why we are here,But I'm pretty sure that it is notIn order to enjoy ourselves.

• There is no greater distress to be feltThan that of one human being.For if someone feels himself lost,That is the ultimate distress.

• The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists,But even if it does, what problems this really solves.

• There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it.

• My advice to you is to get married:Iif you find a good wife you'll be happy;If not, you'll become a philosopher.

• It is the heart which perceivesGod and not the reason.That is what faith is:God perceived by the heart, not the reason.

• I have the true feeling of myselfOnly when I am unbearably unhappy.

• For what is man without desires,Without free will,And without the power of choiceBut a stop in an organ pipe?

• We are all mortal until the first kissAnd the second glass of wine.

• Life can only be understood backwards;But it must be lived forwards.

• There is merely bad luck in not being loved;there is misfortune in not loving.

• It was previously a questionOf finding out whether or not lifeHas to have a meaning to be lived.It now becomes clear, on the contrary, That it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

• It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people thinkThey can be happy without money.

• What is that which eternally is,Which has no origin?And what is that which arises and passes away,But in truth never is?

• Only the dead have seen the end of war.

• If it was so, it might be;And if it were so, it would be;But as it isn't, it ain't.That's logic.

• Philosophy consists very largely ofOne philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses.He usually proves it,And I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

• If it turns out that there is a God,I don't think that he's evil.But the worst that you can say about himIs that basically he's an underachiever.

• More than any other time in history,Mankind faces a crossroads.One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.The other, to total extinction.Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

• We should not worry about striving for happiness;Rather we must pursue ways to beProperly and productively unhappy.

• Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, It may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

• Booze is the answer. I don't remember the question.

• I drink to make other people interesting.

A Lousy Day

Its one of those days.. boring..dull...nothing happening... kinda start to wonder whats life after all. I mean people have bad days when something unexpected and negative happens, but how can you have a bad day when nothing happens!? Dont know why this question did not pop up sooner, because I have had loads and loads of such lousy days! Its amazing how your mood can change like a flip of a coin, one minute you are starting and looking forward to another day and the next minute you start to wonder whats the purpose of me being here anyways! You may have everybody around you, but when its time for that lousy day theres just nothing anyone can do to help. If a day without anything happening can bother you and bring you down to such a large extent, then I wonder how a person's emotional capacity handles actual lousy things that happen in life. Well, think about this, what part of the brain do you think reacts to make for a lousy day. Acually, I feel no part of my brain reacts as a result of a lousy day. I sat there watching Winona Ryder in some movie called Reality Bites, she was having a lousy day too, well she lay on the couch running up her phone bill and smoking away pack after pack of cigarretes!

Reasearchers itseems have said that 'Its high time boredom be recognized as a legitimate human emotion that can be central to learning and creativity'. Well I have never seen any of my boring and lousy days turn into anything other than couch lazing, binging on fatty food and watching any damn thing on the TV. If you are bored, itseems your brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, or a person. Yeah! I have been living in the same house for more than 2 decades, watching TV forever, what do you expect, for me to discover a falling apple! or get a sudden entrepreneurial brainwave! come on get real. Well ofcourse the researchers say 'Its the difference between a sort of person who can look at a pool of mud and find something interesting, and someone who has a hard time getting absorbed in anything'. I tend not to like such quotes, because I somehow never make it into the good group! Arent quotes like that supposed to be inspirational! Check this one out 'When the external and internal conditions are right, boredom offers a person the oppurtunity for a constructive response'. Well since we are not breeding a million scientific inventors and entrepreneurial geniuses every minute, it can only mean the next choice, most people bothered by boredom do not possess the right external and internal conditions :). Well finally they say 'Boredom has the power to exert pressure on individuals to stretch their inventive capacity'! I am definitely waiting for the day when that one comes true!

some quotes that i found to be interesting :)

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear"
Thomas Jefferson quotes (American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826)


"Socrates, you will remember, asked all the important questions - but he never answered any of them"
Dickinson Richards quotes


"You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?"
Freeman Dyson quotes (English Physicist, b.1923)


"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer"
Douglas Adams quotes (British comic Writer, 1952-2001)


"I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right."
Albert Einstein quotes (German born American Physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921. 1879-1955)


"When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say."
Abraham Lincoln quotes (American 16th US President (1861-65), who brought about the emancipation of the slaves. 1809-1865)


"I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh quotes (American writer and aviation pioneer, 1906-2001)


"Thoughts lead on to purpose, purpose leads on to actions, actions form habits, habits decide character, and character fixes our destiny"
Tryon Edwards quotes (American Theologian, 1809-1894)


"Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence."
Thomas S. Szasz quotes (Hungarian psychiatrist and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, b.1920)

live and let live or die and let die

Have you ever come across certain people who make you cringe in anguish!! Why are certain people so sadistic! What do they gain out of it... Sometimes I feel the only way to get back at them is to die with a suicide note naming these people as being responsible for this, add a line about harassment, mail a few copies to some news channels and go... The case may eventually not be proven, but atleast you would have made those people go to the slammer for a few days, get humiliated in front of everyone, and scar them for life! Calling me sadistic?! Well what do you know! These people look like they are flourishing more and more each day, its like the sadism is a manure thats nourishing them to succeed even more! If sadism is not getting to them and nothing negative is happening to them, then may be what the world assumes to be bad is not bad afterall, may everybody has got the meaning of good and bad twisted! Sometimes sweet revenge seems to be the best thing, because if you keep quiet, everything will remain the same, no protector of this universe is up there keeping tabs of all this and waiting to get back at such people! Simple theory of the world, either live and let live or die and make them die!!

Crossroads

I guess there is a time in everyone’s life when they feel they have reached an unknown place, and they dont know where life goes from then on. The feeling of uncertainity, the feeling of what’s going to happen next. Especially when people everywhere around seem to be in the most perfect place in their lives. Why is it that the world seems to have this template, which people need to follow in order to be called successful, and therefore acceptable. People say everything will eventually fall into its place, that’s the norm of life. But, what if, when the pieces fall into their place, you dont like where the pieces have fallen.
I guess most of the people avoid this period of uncertainity and pick a safe path, a path which is trustable and has been tested to give the most promising results. I actually envy such people. In a strange way they know what they want. They have picked a path, and they are happy with it, relaxed, peaceful, calm in their lives.
But ofcourse, people who make a difference in the world are the people who are not scared of the uncertainity. These are the people who are always restless to be different. These are the people who have the dare to pick an untested and a never travelled path. A great person once said “ be the change you want to see”! how many people would really dare to be the change. Everybody wants to enjoy the fruits on an evolved and enlightened society, but only a few, very few, would want to be a part of the change, the evolution. In a way I guess that is justified, because if everyone had what it takes to be the change, imagine how many zillion pages our school history books would contain! I guess nature has its own way to even out greatness in those few people with the mediocrity of a zillion other humans.
Then again, there are these other kind of people who tried and failed. For every Vascodagama, there would have been thousands of people who set out to discover distant lands and were never heard of again. For every Dhirubhai Ambani, there would have been lakhs of people who came to the city on that very same day as him, tried their luck and failed, or simply didnt make it as big as him. What is it with great people, what are they made of! Or is it just about being at the right place at the right time. Is it just a stroke of luck that decides between being in the mediocre group and being etched in the human history forever!
I guess that’s the downside of picking the less travelled road, there’e a chance you may lose direction, chance of finding a deadend, chance of only red signals all the way, chance of just missing the green light at every signal. Its like forming a pyramid, there should be people at every level to hold the one at the top! There are people at the bottom, there are people who almost made it to the top! A person who dares to be different should also have the dare to face the consequences. If you are scared of falling off the pyramid, you better stick to the bottom levels!

What is Life...?

Isnt that a million dollar question! Many great philosophers say that each man has to try on his own, in his own life to find an answer to that question. Probably one of the things where experience doesnt really count. I have had people ask me why I dont believe in god, why is it so hard for me to believe in the many learned minds who have spent their whole lives finding out the purpose of a human beings’ life. I definitely repect all the great religious leaders in our history, who are trying to teach the world through their own experiences. But, there are so many theories, so many beliefs! Who do you believe?
That is where your birth, your upbringing comes into picture. But, what if a hindu was not born a hindu, will he still in the course of his life embrace hinduism and put all his faith into it?! Highly doubtful! Like a river, wherever it is born, wherever it flows, has to end up in the ocean; will a man, wherever he is born, whatever his upbringing is, will he end up embracing a faith he is destined to ?! Looking at the people around, I will have to say No! Faith and religion in almost all cases depends upon a person’s birth and upbringing. Imagine a child is not brought up according to any particular religion, and you tell the child that it is free to pick whichever faith or belief it wants. What will the child do! It now has all the freedom in the world to embrace anything, any faith, pick from the many theories that exist in the world! I have seen a hindu’s child being a hindu; a muslims’s kid following islam; an atheist’s child probably ending up an atheist, but what would a child left to its thinking, its choice; what would the child do!
I think any person who truly wants to find out what life is should think like a child who does not belong to any faith and has the freedom to embrace anything in the world. Why is that the first rule in any religion is complete submission to the belief, unquestionable faith !? Go to any religion, the ground rules are the same. If you want to be here, have faith, believe in only this and nothing else. And if you want to do more, be a goodwill ambassador, tell the rest of the world that this is the belief that will take them to heaven, spread the word. Complete devotion to Vishnu, unshakeable belief in allah, or submission to jesus is what will take you to heaven and will give you a good life after death because this is the purpose of your life. Then there is the book! It has everything, how to live life, what’s good what’s bad, what will get you in the good books of god and what will count as a sin, it even has points on how to sin and wash off your sins!! Thats the great thing about these books. If you sin and you are kicked out of the religion, you will be let off the hook, you wont be a follower anymore, so you can sin and jus follow the rules in the book, wash off your sin and still be a staunch follower of the religion!! Then there’s the aftermaths of a bad sinful life, what can be your punishment, and thats why in order to avoid all that, you better follow the rules!
So now you know why the world is such a happy, peaceful place! You have people sinning all the way, and then washing off their sins all the way back. So hell must be an empty place after all, if you have forgiveness for every sin you do, why in the world would anyone end up in hell! And whats the single fastest way to forgiveness? Yeah you guessed it! Complete submission to the faith again!
My purpose of saying all this is not to just ridicule all the people who are followers of all the different religions in the world. It is to tell them open your eyes, open your mind. Dont you see a pattern in all these religious rules, dont you think that by asking you to have unquestionable faith, it is asking you not to reason, not to think, saying dont question is actually suppressing the free thought process of the brain. Drawing boundaries and limiting the thought process of an individual is no way of getting someone to follow any theory. If every sin has forgiveness, then why do we give death sentences and life imprisonments to criminals. If god is willing to forgive, then who are we to punish. May be there is a god. But the ways of approaching him need to be questioned. There are many things in these religions and their books that are meaningful and need to be respected, but unquestionable faith and complete submission is something that needs to be given a proper thought; proper, unbiased, fearless thought.