HOW TO FOOL YOURSELF & WHY?

        

‘I can’t fool myself, I know the realities of life and I would be a fool to shut my eyes to these realities .........’

Very well said indeed! This, in fact, is the call to the real world, of a man, of a real man, so to say as contrasted against ‘the boys’. There are so many things in life which are true and no matter what you do, you cannot change them. Right?....

Wrong!!!!

Can you change your basic nature? Can you speak fluently in public? Can you sell a million insurance policies? Can you Bungee Jump? NO?

Obviously YES !!!

‘But you don’t know my realities of life. I have a million chores to attend to, have responsibilities with which it is not possible to have personal priorities’.  And now who is fooling whom?

Well, its only you fooling yourself!

Over the years, we tend to get into grooves from which it is very difficult to dig ourselves out. We get a set pattern of life, start feeling comfortable with a certain kind of thinking, get our own set of ‘omens’ and ‘jinxes’ from our experiences .....generally bitter experiences.  Our lives start becoming stale, our attitudes start hardening and we become very sensitive to anything contrary to our line of thought. We get awfully irritated if someone insists upon ‘impractical’ thoughts (as we rate them). We know that here is a naive person who doesn’t ‘know the realities of life’ or ‘is trying to escape them’. And then we look at his exuberance, his bubbling spirit and know that this guy is going to realise the realities of life ‘the hard way’.


Now who’s fooling whom?

Well let me tell you, we are always fooling ourselves. We are just perpetuating our fears, sometimes in the name of reality, at others in the name of truth, conviction, conscience or whatever we  prefer to call it. There are so many things in our lives which are beyond our direct control that we are constantly afraid that our lives may be seriously damaged anytime. And then we approach the nearest available Messiah to take care of all our fears, to ward off all the lurking ills. We approach the nearest soothsayer to advise certain rituals to keep the evil away and to ensure that our future is properly taken care of.  And again, we are only fooling ourselves!!!.

So what is the way out?

When we are, even presently, in the business of only fooling ourselves, we can always choose to sail with happiness rather than with grief. We can as easily choose to fool ourselves by allowing our courage to take charge of our thought process and simply refuse to be bushed down by our fears. Let us start realising our life-pattern of doubt and start replacing our fears with boldness. We need to remind ourselves that things do keep going wrong in our lives at times, sometimes seriously so, but we always keep moving on, maybe after a period of hibernating in grief, the length of which depends upon our capacity to spring back. Some of the people you know have the shortest of recovery periods and spring back immediately, they are almost always exuberant. It helps to realise that the fear that currently pervades our mind, is neither the first of its kind, nor the last. Even if the worst possible thing happens, the life, in all likelihood, would go on, even though the quality of life may deteriorate a little.

But with a little effort, a little resourcefulness, more of determined cheerfulness and courage, the quality of life would again become better than the present fear-laden existence.


Let us fool ourselves in expecting only the best things in life, and we will see most of them  coming true!!!! 

IS THERE REALLY A GENERATION GAP ?

Almost everybody I know agrees that the Generation Gap is one of the worst maladies that confronts our world and the world could have been a much better place if somehow the situation could be properly addressed. Quotes like ‘Every generation is so designed as to give maximum trouble to the previous generation’ abound, and almost everybody keeps talking untiringly about ‘our times’ / ’our generation’ with such wistful nostalgia that the generation gap becomes most real.

But have you ever pondered these normal observations with a deeper insight? Do you recollect that your colleague Angels never seems to agree with you though both of you share the same month and year of birth. And the lady at the reception is so different even though she is only a year junior. Like nobody in your age group could agree to the same choice of restaurant for the company’s annual bash as everybody seemed to have a different experience with the same places. And that whizkid of the spoilt brat , 20 years your junior, was the only one with you in choosing the ‘ Angel’s Stopover’ as the right choice?

Only the MD, 10 years your senior, and the whizkid seem to agree that the strange gizmo the company has lately started shipping out can sell a million pieces in the year. Have you ever wondered that most of the persons in your age group seem to disagree on a zillion things (Well try making a list of these things and you will find out in a hurry!) and many of the others which are years apart tend to agree with your views or at least like them, at times are  impressed with them. Some amongst the younger/older generation seem such well behaved angels while others of your age are such insipid monsters.

Then where is this generation gap, when disagreements amongst compatriots abound while there is unity of thought amongst people who are years apart. Generally it is only a figment of our imagination, a simple way of bundling one-to-one relationships so that most situations can be attributed to a simple difference of age. And where does a generation start and the previous one ends? Why are your two kids, who were born just two years apart,  light-years apart in their behaviour? No simple solutions this time around? And what is the need for such simplistic explanations, aren’t they both equally adorable despite their differences! Is the world not such a wonderful place, where novelties abound, because of the differences of perception amongst individuals, where a Disney makes a wonderful difference, a Bernard Shaw paints the scenes totally differently than you always thought about it, a Tennyson, a Bach conjure up such beauty out of their imagination?

Would you write-off zillions of people under the label of a different generation rather than appreciating their points-of-view, their thought-process, their feelings towards you and dig such wide chasms between younger and older persons despite this multitude being such a diverse treasure of talent, available right in front of you. 

And make a complete mess of your life in the bargain?!!!!!    

COME START A NEW LIFE WITH A NEW VIGOUR & ENJOYMENT-AT HOME AS WELL AT THE OFFICE.