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.

HOW TO HANDLE YOUR BLUES

Almost all resentments in life result from the idea that while life is passing us by, we have not achieved as much as we should have.

At times, we are blue because of some temporary happenings: for example a promotion which has been denied to us even when we are sure that we richly deserve it and are dying to keep ahead of a particular individual or a group of individuals or are trying to catch up with such individual(s) and it hurts extremely bad to cut such a sorry figure in front of such (despicable?) creatures. Or maybe someone is outperforming us in every sphere (that we can think of) in our life- personal as well as official, or others’ kids are outdoing our kids and, try as we may,  we don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. And when it gets the worst, we wish to drown ourselves in drinks or, in extreme circumstances we feel like committing suicide. In essence, this feeling of  under-performance seems to be ruining our life.

But is that really a fact, are we really under-performing? Is there really an ordered level of performance in our life, which is a divine command? Are we really somebodys only if we reach a certain level of achievement at a certain age of life. You might think that is the case, that unless one starts earning a certain level of income by a certain age, gets a given level of grades in his studies and is in a position to impress a minimum number of individuals by his achievements he is a failure.

Okay let us go by this faith and try to fix what minimum levels are they. And of course, who orders and determines these levels? Is it our parents, who through their constant advisories have always been enlightening us as to where we stand in our lives, is it our school and college teachers who keep telling us that at this age where they were in their lives and where a person of our intelligence should have been in our lives, or is it our spouses who keep articulating how miserable they are that they have married such miserable piece of trash, or is it evident from what the Boss at our office has been rubbing in, 48 hours a day, 1000 days a year for eons together, or is it our kids who keep informing us what the parents of their best friends or worst enemies are achieving which they expected us to at least have done to ensure them a minimum level of honourable subsistence? Or is it really ‘the FACT’ as ‘everybody knows it’ and ‘any person with a basic intelligence’ ‘would agree’ that we should achieve a certain level in any particular field.   

WELL IF THAT IS NOT HUMBUG,  what else is? How did your parents, your teachers, your spouse, your boss or your kids become experts on how to decide the required level of achievement for you to be certified as a worthwhile member of the human race? Where do these ‘FACTS’ that ‘everybody knows’ descend from? The Heavens themselves? Or is it what others have been able to rub-in into our so-called conscience through the years of our existence till now?

OPEN YOUR EYES AND SEE WHO ARE  YOU ALLOWING TO RUIN YOUR LIFE by giving your own intelligence away to others. There is no manual of instructions on how to spend your time on this planet. Had there been such a manual it would certainly have been supplied alongwith all new deliveries into the world. Every society fixes up its parameters to brand its inhabitants into different categories and sentences like ‘there are only two/three/four.... types of persons in this world’ are nothing but crap. There are more ‘types of people’ than there are ‘people’ in this world because generally everyone behaves differently at different times and cannot be ‘type-casted’. You don’t need to measure your worth (or anybody else’s, for that matter) in relation to such comparisons and are always free to enjoy yourself as you are, without needing to prove your worth to anybody, including yourself. You are always free to spend your time on this planet as you wish. No two persons or societies can ever be the same, and there is no way of gauging their superiority to each other. And on the highway of this life, you can never be ahead of everybody else and you never know who all are ahead of you, and you don’t even need to find that out too. You can enjoy your passage at your leisure, sometimes travelling fast and at others slow, as your fancy takes you, without feeling guilty. The only requisite, perhaps, is that you are enjoying the scenery.

               

AND THAT, pray, is the way to eternal bliss !

Irreverence: Thou name is individuality

      Irreverence is of the essence, because to place somebody above you is to give almost all of youself to the whims of an ideosyncrat. Why not you? No one is worthy of your sustained (or more than a flitting) reverence; Bernard shaw, Shakespeare, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela et al, if your  esteem is not supreme, then who is it. Did you choose this life? Why be indebted eternally for a non-gift? Why thank any body for an unwanted gift which spawns all kinds of responsibilities and hardly bestows any blessings. You are required to look a certain way. Even looking casual or a rebel is a demand of the situation. Your smile, your bored public expression, your requirement to be your own man, an ideosyncrat, a non-confirmist are all demands which you are obliged to pander to. Some freedom that!!! REVERENCE!!!!.

        ‘I thank my director, my parents, my……, the Eastern side of West Hollywood for appreciating a role which I hated to do and not taking any cognisance of the work I loved to do. Now I will bow to your preferences and not do any original work. And of course thank God for my success and my prostitution! Because I am not a full individual, but depend upon your applause to recognise my ‘existence’. If that is not duplicity, what else is? And for what? To be somebody in the eyes of the billions who are nobodys in individuality but are commerce united. In commerce we believe. The ravishings, the gorgeouses and the magnenimouses are zilch but for the very lowly intelligence endowed. Some things are too sacred to be commented against even though you (and most other intelligent beings) ridicule them in your own heart.

       HONK & Be proud if you are a non-entity and your organisation, your school is all that gives you a semblance of a sense of self-worth otherwise you would have been a pig in the swamp or a dog in a drain , who perhaps  is more proud of himself as he has no institution to thank for having given him an independent existence.

Be a SWINE, a proud swine than being a ‘no exist’ president of the US.

       Who doesn’t know the nether Lord, the corrupt satanic ‘Me Lord’, the corrupt and incorrect umpire, the orthodox rebel.... but still there is the grave silence. Nobody raises his voice against an institution which is greater than humanity itself, greater than YOU?!!! Can you believe that? Isn’t that the greatest joke of all. Up with reverence.... Down with individuals... up with institutionalised prostitution. Up with pretense, down with conscience. 

I am with you, you joke of a world !!

Are resources really scarce?

Just as a little saving on electricity makes you acutely conscious of water shortage. does a little saving on effort make you acutely concious of scarcity of money, while plenty abounds.