Monday, May 31, 2010

What I Learned This Week

1]The purpose of going through life is to be confronted and questioned by our beliefs and have them tested by trials of anguish and remorse and to be compelled to form one's own moral code of existence and existing.

2]Does the need to reiterate love for another stem from the absolute absence of it or the doubt of it?

3]I can not be passionate about any thing. I carry all my baggage at all times, and I get drawn by the wind only too easily. It is the only natural way of living I have experienced and I must stop trying to live otherwise. I'll drift.

4]I have had a very safe childhood. My major grudges are that my parents left me to grow up into my own. I did most of my mentoring. Considering the realities of life on earth, I am absolutely privileged-both my parents were present, I knew them from the start, both were my own, I wasn't molested, beaten, taught to be a girl, I have never seen a person murdered, never been compelled to kill another, I have never starved, not had to save my mother from a drunken beating, cheating husband or an addiction, not had to take up cudgels on behalf of myself much less a people, never been beaten out of my own home with nothing but the clothes on my back, never had to bear the curse of colour, caste or religion, never been scarred by seeing the humiliation of another, never cowered for life in a war...I have got a true complete chance at life...

5]The way people behave and the things they say are who they are. I must stop thinking that they are only fooling around just because I would behave in their manner only if I wished to entertain.
People are clues unto themselves.

6]Industrialization has gifted us the marvel of 2-minute lives-Just Add Water. We have forgotten the aromas and earthy flavours of the real deal.
Just because some one looks it, does not mean he is it. Stereotypes are outsourced and mass produced.

7]The best way to manage relationships is to not nurture them. Let them grow and assume the plainness of weeds. Let them survive on their own merit. Don't give them thought or time, you'll want returns on your investments, and greed sticks to our insides.

8]How can we lay claim on an artist's work? How can we compete to 'own' them?
Why can we not build centers housing all the works of an artist in a place that he loved most and each be allowed to pay respect?

9]Isn't it criminal to have children in the times we live?

10]We are the children that would question-What did you do to our home?

11]It is very saddening that we choose to like traits in people like ice-cream flavours, and easily dump them if they taste a tad different. Has our fear of falling ill crept into our relationships as well? Is the fulfillment of vows a requisite only for marriages?

12]It is best to leave when the going is good.

13]I am very good at moving on. When a relationship, phase or lifetime is over, it is over.

14]Some major things happen for no reason at all. There are no lessons to learn, no one to blame, only to suffer a weird mood and get back to life.

15]I love the style of the 8o's best.

16]Why does popular culture paint Love over every other painful feeling? Why don't we talk plain life? Why gloss up, thin out, and dumb down?

17]The excesses of the rich are paid for by the poor. There is no barrier to the imagination of their whims: they can play toy soldiers with real men and maximum gore; a wife can defend her husband for unleashing his perverseness on a child; eating mud can be labeled habit with a straight face; children can be trained to become dancing monkeys (reminds me painfully of Sohrab in The Kite Runner-at least his excuse was that he was an orphan).
I think I understand why most lust after power. Like every addiction, it fortifies weakness.

18]The only men I will ever truly love will be dead or writers I will never meet. There is much to match up too and none can. As Shakespeare said-Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.
He is definitely for all time.:)

5 comments:

Tangled up in blue... said...

I was right. You are wise. :)

Ketan said...

My thoughts:

1. Any purpose to life is basically self-assigned. In my case, purpose is to extract happiness out of each moment. Each instance of learning also brings with it a happiness. Possibly, I'm quite decided about the gross aspects of my morality. It is its application that I need to perfect. Which in turn I need to do for upkeep of my self-image. 'Bad' self-image interferes with happiness; 'good' one consolidates it. This is how in my case morality is related to purpose of life. Same is the case with being ignorant to begin with & finding answers & perfecting them over time.

2. Your 2 only options hurt me. :) The last & the only time I'd reiterated my love over & over again, it was because love was the only thing that had occupied my mind; it was saturated with love. If you've not experienced this feeling, it's the most beautiful one I ever experienced. But yes, you need the right person & right frame of mind. I used to find it easy to discard caution & allow myself to flow in that feeling. But probably wisdom gained with age & experience precludes such callousness, not because of fear, but lingering awareness of purposelesness of it all.

3. What you tend to get drawn to again & again could be your passion? Is what experiences fatigue, and waxing-&-waning not passion?

4. Same pinch! Sometimes, comparing myself with those who'd to face all that, I find my comfortable life undeserved.

5. & 6. Is their some mutual contradiction? 6 would tell me that people fake their lives. 5 tells me that whatever people say & do is their true self. Of course, both these points can be reconciled if it's assumed we can see through the fakeness, in which case tendency to fake would be the true self, & what facade one chooses to conceal the real self would ironically reveal the self they try to conceal, is that right?

7. Maybe, it's not the relationships that require management, but various incidents throwing up from time to time that need maneuvering through depending upon how we interpret those incidents. Moreover, passivity ("Let them grow") of any sort when an option to act/react is available, is also a form of conscious choice. Also I think, once take on this issue will keep on changing to keep in proportion with degree of one's misanthropy. ;) ...

Ketan said...

...8. Art is to be experienced, not owned. But does owing a piece of art make it more accessible to experiencing it if & when desire to that end arises? I'm not even getting into the "status-symbol" art!

9. I think it's unethical to bring children to life in any era. Primarily because we don't ask for their consent in the process. Am serious!

11. Not sure, haven't done it myself. Probably, you don't realize how shallow most relationships around are. Relations for most are not flavors to be tasted (self-experienced), but are like clothes chosen on the bases of convenience & how putting them on would have one perceived by others. Tasting engages the senses much more than anxiety of acquiring clothes only to forget them after putting them on.

13. Same pinch, again! But it makes me wonder if feelings I had experienced & expressed in the 'active' phase of the relationship/lifetime were sincere or not. Is durability of a feeling an index to its sincerity &/or intensity. Paradoxically, maybe not! Because I think area under the curve of feelings in our mind against time tends to remain constant - either experience them in a sustained manner at basal level or in short spikes. It would be wrong to term any of the two tracings as sign of insincerity.

14. Very true. A very important thing to know about life. Incidentally, our existence itself is an example of what you write! ;)

16. I share your complaint.

17. True, having power helps us feel less insignificant than others, in turn helping us escape the overall insignificance of our lives.

18. Pretext to be disillusioned is best offered by that which not salient. :) Or maybe I'm plain jealous? ;)

It's become customary because of the sustained quality of your writing, but not at all perfunctory, for me to state - well observed, well thought, well inferred & well written!

Do check out this blog - Remains of the Day (click).

Take care.

Shakti_Shetty said...

Beautiful, simply beautiful. Keep writing.

Nitisha said...

This is probably one of the most sensible and honestly written blog posts I've come across.
I'll be back for more. :)