Tag: Philosophy

Categories
Philosophy

Things the World Does not Need(or Needs Less of)

I have a tendency of writing my thoughts and ideas down, and that is why I am a big fan of note taking apps and services. I have used Google Keep, OneNote, Evernote, QOwnNotes, Apple’s Note app, Joplin and others that I may have used in the past but do not remember now. I currently use my own program called mynotes. It uses vim, bash shell script and markdown. You can download mynotes for free from github.

I was doing some reorganizing of my notes when I found a list of “Things the world does not need or needs less of”. I have included some here.

plastic bags

Plastic in general should be avoided almost always, but it still does have its place especially in places and products that are going to be used for a very very long time – think in terms of at least double digit years. However, plastic bags are a menace to the environment and should be BANNED everywhere in the world. They have a very short usage time, but a very long life span and causes havoc in our rivers, lakes, oceans and to aquatic life.

Antivaxers, Flat Earthers, Anti-everythingers, and Conspiracy Culture

The current Covid19 pandemic has shown something quite strange – the existence of a subclass of skeptics called antivaxers.

“Why do I need to take a vaccine for something that I do not have” is what most of them say. That is literally what vaccines are for; for something that you do not have, but in case if you do get it, your immune system is better prepared to fight it off, thereby avoiding hospitalization or worse – death!

Conspiracy culture has been brewing for some time, but the this Covid19 Pandemic has brought to light

The Caste System

Now this is specifically related to the Indian Culture, and I can talk about it because I am Indian. India has given the world yoga, pranayam, meditation, ayurveda. India is the birth place of religions like Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism with all these religions having non-violence and equality for all living things at its core simply by saying that every living thing has a soul, from humans right down the the smallest insects.

India has also been responsible for deep philosophical concepts like Dharma, Karma, Maya and Mokshya. India has given the world great epics like the Mahabharat and the Ramayan.

With everything that India has given the world that Indians should be proud of, there is also this one thing that all Indian should be ashamed of and that is the caste system!

No country and no culture is perfect, and every society has had its share of missteps in history. What bothers me and what frankly is unacceptable is that the caste system still exists in the minds and hearts of many Indians from big cities to small villages. The caste system makes no sense, and the only thing it is good for is prejudice and discrimination.

Petroleum Fuel Based Cars

I think every country should mandate the ban of petroleum fuel based cars by a certain date; the sooner the better. Brands like Tesla have already proven that electric cars are not only a viable alternative, but they are actually cool! Electric cars mean less air pollution, less lining up at gas stations, paying close nothing for a ‘fill up’, having the option of charging your cars at home, and adds to our global efforts of reducing our reliance of fossil fuel.

Poverty

When you have companies that are richer than entire countries, it is a big problem. The 1% of the richest people in the world have the wealth and power to lift people all around the world out of poverty. I am not talking about redistribution of wealth, I am merely talking about empowering people below to the poverty line to be lifted out of it. The only reason that the rich are not helping the poor is because of greed. I do not see any other reason.

Animal Agriculture

Just think about these facts:

“It[Animal Agriculture] is responsible for somewhere between 20 and 33% of the fresh water usage in the world”

“…livestock, and the production of feed for them, occupy about a third of the earth’s ice-free land.”

“animal husbandry is responsible for up to 91% of the deforestation in the Amazon region.”

“Cows produce from 35 to 40% of the overall methane emissions of the planet”

“Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of the powerful and long-lived greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_husbandry

Need I say more?

The best thing that you can do for the environment is to stop consuming animals.
You cannot be an environmentalist and not be a vegan.

Influencers, Reaction Videos, Fake Pranks and TicToc

I am honestly sick and tired of people who call themselves “influencers”. How is that a thing? At what point did we as a society decide that that is an actual career choice. A lot of the videos that I have seen on tictoc or Instagram Reels and now youtube shorts is mind numbingly annoying trash. Or maybe, I am just a “boomer” .

How is watching someone react to another person’s video entertaining. These people get millions of views for practically doing nothing. I consider this as stealing, being lazy and is detrimental to general creativity on any platform.

90% of the prank videos that I currently see on any platforms are fake. There was a time when people actually made an effort to prank people, and I mean genuinely prank people. Then there was an era when people faked the pranks but at least put genuine effort to make it convince; they were putting an effort to make their fraudulent and very fake pranks look genuine. I hated that era, but now sadly I kind of appreciate and miss those days when I had to think and figure out if these were fake or genuine. Nowadays, we inflicted with 15 second trash pranks – bad attacking, zero effort garbage.

Which brings me to platforms like tictoc, instagram reels and stories, and youtube shorts that make such things possible. This rapid descent of society started with Tictoc, but the downword spiral began much earlier with Facebook.

Just my Opinion

This is just my opinion and like me, you have opinions of your own. There are many other things that I can think about that we as a global society need less of, but if I write all of them down, I am afraid I will never be able to stop writing.

What are some of the things that you think the world needs less of?

Categories
Psychology

The Compass

In my previous post I talked about the 3 principles which I believe will change the way you live life, hopefully for the better. The 3 principles are:

  • Be responsible (for your experiences)
  • Be present (in the now)
  • Let go (of expectations and attachment)

But the question that one must ask is, if I responsible for my own experiences than how do I control this responsibility. If I am to focus on the present, what exactly am I to focus on? What do I let go?

Know Thyself

It is my belief that if you are to chose your primary goal in life, it must be only one thing; understanding your true nature, everything else secondary. Two simple words “Know Thyself”, yet truly living by it can do wonders and neglecting it can be lead to a world of pain and suffering.

You can try to make logical choices when it comes to the three principles, but the effort it requires is monumental if you do not fundamentally know who you really are.

Define Yourself

Knowing yourself is as much an endeavour of discovery as it is an effort of creation.

I would prefer to call this concept, “Define Yourself” rather than Know Thyself”, as we are culturally programmed to think that knowing something is a matter of discovering something that already exists, but more dangerously, whatever that thing that exists is immutable, unchangeable.

Knowing your natural characteristics or characteristics that you may have acquired over the course of your life through experiences is a great place to start. And that is it, ‘a start’. If there are things about yourself that you do not like, you can make effort towards changing them.

Conversely, if there are things that you do like about yourself, you can work towards enhancing those specific characteristics.

Knowing yourself is difficult enough, how do you you even go about defining yourself?

Values

Your values define you are you. Knowingly or unknowingly we are making decisions based on your values.

Ask yourself what do you value most in life? Ask yourself about your values in different aspects of you life. What do you think is good, what do you think is bad. What do you want more in life, what do you want less in life? Are there things that you stand for? Are there things that you stand against?

If you do not know your values, you can define them. This is a start to defining who you are as a person. I will give you my own example. About a year ago, I started asking myself these questions and one of the values that I decided that I will stand for is non-violence. This led me to adopting a vegan lifestyle. Another thing that I value in life is environment friendliness and sustainability.

These values help me make decisions in life. Of course it is not always easy, but it does help you steer towards your values more than away from them once you choose to define your values.

I have either sold or recycled old laptops by turning them into routers and servers. I started wet shaving with either straight razors or safety razor and soap, instead of using refillable cartridges.

My values do not make them any better or worse than yours, because that is the whole point of defining your values. They help you define who you are as an individual and help you make decision by acting as your compass.

Blueprint of Your Compass

There are many times that we get stuck on making decisions in life. It could be as simple as what to have for lunch or as pivotal as changing or choose a career path.

Priority

The more you know and define your value the easier it can get when it comes time to making importantly decisions in life. It is simply not enough to decide or discover your values, but you must also prioritise them. You may value a lot of things in life, but how important is each of those values? That is a key question that will help you make decisions in life.

But even after you have spent ample amount of time defining and prioritising your values, you may still feel stuck in making certain decisions in life. Ever wondered why?

The reason is conflicting values. This happens when you have two values that are opposite in nature. What do I mean by that?

Say one of you values is non-violence and because of that you decide to adopt a vegan lifestyle. However, your other value is variety in food. You value different cuisines, and like to try and experiment different dishes, flavours, textures and tastes etc… These two are fundamentally different. Sure you can think of creative ways of making vegan food taste great and believe me it does. However, if you want to try and eat exotic animals, you will suffer much anguish because two of your values are in conflict. What you end up doing will depend on the priority of each individual value.

What is worse when you have clash of the titans. This is when you have two values that are either opposites or simply not compatible and both are of equal priority.

Crafting Your Compass

As you can see it is important to evaluate your values and weed out conflicts prior to facing them in life altering situations. The easiest way to start is to check whether your values are contradicting each other. If they are you must decide on which values will have a higher priority and which ones will have a lower priority.

Of course, you do not need to eliminate your values, it is fair to give them different priorities, and yes, you have the right to choose them as you wish.

Once you have spent ample amount of time defining and prioritizing your values, you must visit them often, ideally at regular intervals to evaluate and make changes if and where necessary. Do not fall into the trap of rigidity.

The best way to maintain integrity with yourself and your values is it to write as much of this down as possible. This gives you something concrete to look it. It will almost feel like your values have been giving life.

You can then refer to what you have written to remind yourself about your values and also to give you the opportunity to reevaluate them and make necessary tweaks.

Using your Compass

I want to reiterate, these 3 principles have mentioned here and in my previous post together with the concept of the compass is a tool, a mental tool just like the technology that surround you like your phones, tables and computers, and the Internet, the cars that you drive, or refrigerators for cooling and so on.

We are so dependent on technology, and I do believe that such technology makes our life easier and in many ways helps us making decisions better. But no technology is worth a dime if you do not know how to use it.

Likewise, with your values as a compass you can navigate decision making, become responsible for your experiences, draw yourself into the present and focus on what is important to you, and find balance by detaching from unwarranted expectations.

Categories
Philosophy

These 3 Principles will Change The Way You Live

I am not a religious person. I am also not a spiritual person, and quite frankly, I never really understood what that meant (being spiritual). I admit to being philosophical. I love dwelling into philosophy, and thus, sometimes expression of my ideas encroach into the realm of religion or “spirituality”, because religion is mostly steeped in philosophy.

I do not claim to perfectly live by these principles, and I have had no sudden epiphanies about these. Each principle was revealed so to speak over time and contemplation. Somehow I knew for a very long time and we all do in some form or another. However, it is funny how the mind works; when we see or hear ideas that have always been floating around in our heads, we finally “see” or realize.

What I ask of you is to ponder upon these principles, and try to start applying them slowly and see how they change the way you live.

You are Responsible for Your Experiences

Whatever you have experienced, are experiencing or will ever experience is your responsibility. Your thoughts, your choices, your actions that were made by you, led you to experience each and every event that has happened in your life. The same will be true for anything and everything that you have not experienced.

I know that this becomes tricky when people start giving counter arguments like, “Oh what about that car accident?” Or “What about the hurricane that destroyed my home?” or some other negative or bad thing that they experienced.

Has anyone ever blamed anyone or anything for something good happened to them? When good things happen, it is always, you worked hard, or you are smart, or it is your abilities, or your luck made it happen. If you are not responsible for all the bad that happens to you then you are also not responsible for anything good that happens to you.

This principle is not about blaming the victim, but empowering them. Accepting that all your thoughts, actions, choices and decision led you to that specify point in time and space to experience that event, releases everything and anything that you do not have direct control over. Moreover, accepting and knowing that you are responsible for what you experience, you can choose what to experience next. You become the master of you destiny so to speak. You are in the driver seat; not your mother, father, friend, lover, boss, weather, stock market, or anything.

There is the physical aspect of an event, and then there is the after effect of that event. The event itself you may not have control over, however, how you experience that event is up to you. I will give you an example of what I mean by that.

There are two people at a concert. One person is annoyed that they did not get the seats that they wanted, that people are jumping around and blocking their view and it is too loud or not loud enough. This person will have a completely different experience then the other person who is filled with joy because they are at a concert of their favorite band, they do not care about where they are seated because they just wanted to be at that concert, and enjoying the fact that there are other people who love this band just as much as they do and they are enjoying the experience together.

These two people are in the same event in time and space, but their experiences of that event are drastically different.

So there are two distinctions of this principle. One is that your thoughts, actions and decisions bring you to an event in time and space. The event that occurs is something that may not have control over, because the chain of cause and effect was already set in motion. Second, although you may not have control over the actual event when it happens, what you experience because of that event is because of you.

Be Present

There is a theory that time is such that everything that has happened in the past, is happening now and will happen in the future is happening all at once. I am not going to get into that.

What I mean by being present is to have your focus on the present. Do not live in the past, do not live in the future; just be present.

This is very important in relationships. Every relationship has ups and down, there are arguments and there are differences. What most people tend to do is bring out the past. Because 20 years ago someone said something that offended you, you decided to get back at them by doing something else.

A lot of times, you keep dwelling on your past mistakes and because of fear of making the same mistake again, you fail to move forward in life. Or that feeling of, ‘oh things were so great. I was so good in basketball, or I wish I could go back to being young’ or something of that nature.

By being in the past and dwelling on what could have, should have, or would have been, you forget to live in the present. On the other side of the spectrum are futurist who keep living in the future. “When this happens, I will do that.”

Some might feel that if you do not look at the past, how will you learn the lessons of the past? For this I will remind you of the first principle, which is you are responsible for what your experience, and so it is important if you want to change your experiences in the future, you must learn from your past and then make changes so that you have a different experience in the future.

When watching a TV show, you watch a recap of what happened in the previous episodes and then you continue watching the show. Do you keep watching the previous episodes again and again without moving forward to the next episode?

Learning from your past is vital to have the optimal first principle, which is “You are responsible for your experiences”. But dwelling on the past is disservice to your experience.

Likewise, planning for the future, and setting goals is vital for your experience as well. If there is something that you would like to experience in life or also importantly not experience in life, you must plan and set goals for the future accordingly. But once that is done, your entire focus must be on the present.

Truly experiencing the present sets you free from the past and future and in my opinion of the ultimately way of living.

Let go

The third principle may seem like a direct contradiction to the first principle. Before that, what do I mean by “let go”?

Let go is the concept of letting go of expectation, of control, desire, hate, bad feelings and even good ones. It is a form of detached way of living. It should not confused with the idea of letting go of all your possession and relationships and duties and responsibilities so that you can go live in a forest, or high up in the mountains. I am very much against that way of “letting go”.

Let go has more to do with letting go of expectations. You are responsible for your experiences and thus you have a right to want to experience certain things in life and for that you must be present and work on those goals. However, you must not be attached to events that either fulfill those experiences or go contrary to desired experiences.

Letting go also applies to the other two principles. Sometimes, you may not be able to focus on the present. Sometimes an event forces you to focus on the past or the future. You must not become angry with yourself for losing focus on the present. You must not be attached to the outcome, do not expect that you will always be able to focus on the present, doing so will create anger and frustration, and this will then affect what you experience.

Likewise, after accepting that you are responsible for experiences, you must let go. Do not keep holding onto the thought because if you do, every little action, every little thought is going to force you evaluate whether or not it is going to start a chain of cause and effect which will ultimately lead you to have a good experience or a bad one.

Being attached to these principles must also be abandoned. These 3 principles must be kept as a reference, as a guide that you keep to remind yourself about what is important in life.

Letting go of expectation in work, business, sports, and especially relationships will bring a serene kind of balance which will be hard to experience without this principle. You have the right and ability to chose your experiences and work towards them, but you do not have the right or power over the faculties of other people and things, and therefore, the only solutions is to let go.

Categories
Enlightenment Philosophy

If I could See you with your Guard down

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
–Carl Sagan
Dear human,
If only I could see you with your guard down, if only I could see you without the sword of words, demeanor, or of metal, I would not have to judge you for your cruelty in intention and action.
Maybe, I could let my guard down too, put my sword away too.
See, in this stand off, no one wins, but at least one is guaranteed to lose and neither of us wants to be the one.
I’m sorry, if I walk away; it’s not that I don’t care – it’s because I do not possess the will to continue this silly game. It also does not mean you won or I lost – it just means I abandoned the game, a game in which violence of any kind is fair game.
I desire to abandon the ego, but I can’t do it while you are watching. The naked truth of the self is light and liberating, but it is also fragile. So I’m sorry if I walk away and be SelfISH so that I can let the Self be what the Self IS.
Categories
Philosophy

Lessons from Cycling

I have been cycling for 2 months now and I must say it is one of the best habits that I have gotten myself into in many years. I have had my bike for more than 8 years, but I doubt that before now I had even ridden it for more than 8 hours. I started riding that old mountain bike first on a nearby multi-use paved trail, then on the road for short distances, then I pushed myself a little further and soon I realized I needed a road bike, so I went and bought myself a road bike. When came bike month, I had an extra bit of motivation to keep riding. I did the “Bike the Creek Event” in Brampton, organized my own event and overall cycling has had a manifold positive impact on my life.

There are some lessons that I have learned from Cycling.

If it is important to you, you will make it happen

If it is important to you, you will make it happen, if not, you will find excuses. I learned this lesson when I started to invite friends to bike with me. Of course, some had genuine reasons to not come. Some were too busy to come, some had not biked in many years, some didn’t own a bike and either didn’t want to spend the money to buy one or wanted to wait for the season to be over so that they could get it cheap at a clearance event and the list goes on. These are all valid reasons, yet I find these same people are not too busy to spend countless hours watching reruns of their favourite and not so favourite TV shows, cannot wait to make an expensive purchase of things which they probably don’t even need,..so on… and you get my point. I’m not judging them; my point is, if it is important to you you will make it happen.

priorityOn the other end of the spectrum, I have a friend, who didn’t have a bike, had not ridden one in more than a decade, has a bad knee, and yet somehow managed to come ride with me on a 40KM+ stretch with multiple hills with me. He asked me if I had a spare bike which I did, he went and bought himself a helmet, put a knee sleeve to protect his knee and showed up way earlier than his usual saturday morning wakeup time. Why? In his own words: being active is important to him.

So the next time you find yourself wanting to do something, but it is not something that you are actually doing, maybe it is just not that high in your priority list, and instead of beating yourself for not doing it, just figure out where your priorities lie and question whether they are justified?

If you do what you love, you’ll start loving what you do

triath
Source: http://www.yalovalifeisgood.com/

Let’s face it; not everything that we do, we actually like doing let alone love doing it. Most people don’t LOVE their job, most might like it, but there are very few who actually love what they do. That is the reason people need vacations and they call it a ‘retreat’. Just google the words “meaning of retreat” and see what you get.

There might be things that you love doing, but you may not have been doing them because you have other ‘important’ things do do. If you just shifted your priorities a little and allocated some time and effort to do the things that you love, that joy and feeling of accomplishment will translate into a stress buster and sip into other areas of your life, whether it be your work, your health, your relationships, your spiritual life and more. When you make time to do what you love, you’ll end up loving what you do – I speak from personal experience! 🙂

If you push just a little more, you will go a lot further

If you push just a little more, you will go a lot further than your imagined. There have been times when my legs felt the burn, my back hurt, shoulders almost gave up, but in that moment I pushed a little more and then a little more and when I checked on my GPS, almost always I was greeted with an amazing and pleasant surprise. Sometimes I end up covering more distance than I had imagined and I usually get to something interesting.

Life is like that too. Most people give up and figuratively speaking get off their bikes or turn around and go back home to a place that’s comfortable at the sight of the slightest incline. Sometimes all it takes is a little push, a bit of hard work and we can accomplish things that you previously thought were impossible. You can apply this principle to sports and fitness, education, business and finance or any other endeavour that you can imagine.

Go the extra mile – it’s worth it!

To get something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done

I have seen and discovered more things about Brampton and the surrounding area in the past 4 weeks than I have in the past 4 years. I try to take different routes every time I go for a ride and every single time I’m greeted with new discoveries.

20150701_173633
Graffiti art under a bridge on the Humber River Recreational Trail

For the Bike The Creek event, I took my bike with me on the Brampton Transit bus which I had never done before. I used the presto card for the first time and I was amazed at how much better the bus ride has become over the past 7 or 8 years.

20150620_073844
Ride and Bike, using the Presto card on the Brampton Transit for the first time en route to “Bike The Creek” Event.

To get something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done – If you think about it, isn’t this true for life in general. Why is it that you have never had the kind of house, car, income, relationship, body, spirituality that you truly desire? If you keep doing what you have always been doing, you will get what you have always gotten. A great definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over gain and expecting a different result.

If you don’t want to fall, you gotta keep moving

Just recently I taught a friend in their 20s how to ride a bicycle. Most people learn how to ride a bicycle early on in their life, but it’s never too late to learn anything new. I noticed that this person was afraid to fall and so was trying to move slowly. I told them the key is to keep moving, if you stop or slow down you will fall, you have to keep pedalling if you want to stay up.

keep-moving_2
Picture taken on Humber Station Road en route to Albion Hills. (Photoshoped motion blur)

Then it hit me! Isn’t that a great lesson in life? You have to keep moving, whatever happens in life, good or bad, you have to keep moving forward. If something bad happens to you whether it is a heart break, divorce, someone dumps you, someone betrays your trust, you are faced with financial difficulty, you are having health issues, you got fired from work, you end up in an embarrassing situations, or whatever the case maybe, you have to move on with your life sooner or later. If you stop and keep thinking about the bad things that happened, you’ll fall deeper into depression, negativity, anger and it’ll be harder to get back up again.

Likewise if something good happens in life, a promotion, graduation, you achieve your health goal, get married, fall in love whatever the case may be, you still have to keep moving to the next step. If you stop and spend all your time wanting to stay in that same moment, life will pass by and you won’t even realize and you will fall. Celebrating your victories is an important part of life, but wanting to stay in that moment forever is merely wishful thinking.

What is the opposite of movement? Stagnation. Stagnation is death. Think about it. How do you know if someone is dead. You identify it by them not moving, their pupils won’t move or react to light variations, their heart won’t move – no heart beat, their brains seizes to function, blood doesn’t flow through the body.

Life is movement.

Categories
Philosophy

The Story of My Life

You are in line at the bank and when finally your turn comes to get served, you find that the bank teller does not greet you with a smile, does not answer your question properly and you generally find their attitude very rude. You decide that that person is just a rude person and then carry on with your day.

While on the way home you pass a person, your eyes lock and they smile, you smile back. Momentarily you feel joy, maybe you think of that person as being nice, or you feel better about yourself thinking, “I must be looking good today” and then you simply let the thought fade away as quickly and quietly as it arrived and continue on your journey home.

You are  living in the story of your life experiencing events unfolding one moment at a time. Your path crosses with the paths of others. They make your life’s experience richer, give you love, joy, annoy you and sometimes even hurt you. You are experiencing intimately and with full attentiveness the story of your life. You live a complex, multidimensional life with emotions, situations, relationships with the people close to you and the relationship with your self. Every situation that you are in is unique, and sometimes people don’t understand you and sometimes they do. No matter what happens how it happens, only you will fully experience and understand the complexity of your life and everyone that you have ever met, heard, saw, or experienced their existence in any form or manner is merely an extra in the story of your life,… and so am I.

maxresdefaultWe all experience life in this way. In our experience we are at the centre of our Universe and everyone else is a distance star, a tiny specific woven into the fabric of our life. Other people that come into our life momentarily or for a longer duration from our telescopic perception live single dimensional and predictable lives, they have general personality traits – this person is a nice person, this one is mean or rude, this one is  a complete @$$ hole etc.. These extras in the story of your life serve a person, mostly a single purpose, and sometimes more than that, but they occupy a very tiny portion of your life.

But in fact these extras don’t live such simple lives. They live a rich complex life filled with emotions, ambitions, disappointments, love, hate, regrets, situations that make them grow, or constraint them. They do good things, they do bad things, sometimes they do things they can’t explain, and sometimes they do things that they can and do explain.

Every person that crosses your path may be an extra in your life, but know that you are also merely an extra in theirs.

Categories
Philosophy

Be Crazy, Be Stupid, Dare a Little, Live a Little More Than You Would By Being Sane

It has been a little over 6 months since I last updated my blog. I had a long list of things I wanted to write about, excited about the thoughts and ideas swirling in my head and then the unexpected happened. I got into a car accident … well no one really plans an accident, so yes I’m just stating the obvious unexpectedness, but it happened. I lost my car and with it my motivation to write. I was out of work for more than 2 months. I loved that car – there are many remarkable and fun memories and some living in the realm of unmentionables.

spring-fitnessBut that’s not really the point of this post. I had also stopped almost all forms of physical activity after my accident. Today was the first day I went out for a jog since then. I recently bought a Misfit Flash, a fitness tracker(more on that and other stuff in the next few posts). There is a jogging/cycling trail near my home. As I was climbing one of the hilly portions of the trail I saw 3 boys in their mid teens. I also saw a shopping cart roll down the hill and crash into the railings of a small bridge.

As I came closer I could see the looks on their faces, trying to gauge my response to what had just conspired anticipating perhaps some remark about the negative consequence of such actions. In my mind all I could think was “thankfully these kids are outside and not having a heated conversion on high scores on their XBox Game Card or something (to the gamers: yes, I know that one didn’t make complete sense – that’s exactly my point).

As I passed them, I yelled out,

” You should get in it and roll down the hill!”

From jackass-the-movie
From jackass-the-movie

The look on their faces was nothing less than priceless. There was a moment of confusion as they looked at me, then at each other, bewildered and amazed by the inception of an idea that a stranger had just sparked in their minds. Perhaps it was a moment of disbelief as they came to terms with the fact that an adult had just told them to do something that may get them into trouble and something that was potentially dangerous. The youngest and least tainted by the experiences of rules realized that this stranger, this adult was actually serious about the idea and the possible fun factor of this potentially hazardous idea spoke out electrified.

“YAH Guys! Let’s do it”

I didn’t get a chance to see what I had hoped to happen actually happen before I jogged past them. After I had jogged about 50 meters, I looked over my shoulder only to see the boys walking up the hill, the two older ones with their bicycles and the younger one with a skateboard in his hand.

I was disappointed!

At that moment, those kids decided not to be crazy, not to be stupid and not to dare, not to create a memory that they some day might have talked about or simply thought about.

They will never have that memory because they chose not to create it.

How many times have you let your saner head prevail? How many times have you taken the ‘right turn’ because a ‘map’ in your head told you that any other way might just be wrong? How many times have you dared not to act foolishly in fear of embarrassing yourself in the eyes of your peers, or strangers that don’t even matter? I could ask many of these question and you would answer them in any number of ways possible.

At every turn in your life either a spark of adventure will live or a small part of your life will leave.

Be Crazy, Be Stupid, Dare a Little, Live a Little More Than You Would By Being Sane.

I leave you with the inspirational music to my dare seeking eyes and wisdom to my inquisitive soul.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

– Helen Keller

Categories
Business Self Development

What Should you write about?

Recently I was asked for some advice. This person said that they were always interested in writing, but never could really figure out what to write about. After following some of my blog posts, they asked me for some insight into how to decide what to write about, how to plan their writing, how often write, how to determine who the target audience is? etc…

First and foremost, I was flattered that someone asked me for advice on writing. I also felt some pressure to give appropriate answers to their questions. However, when it finally dawned upon, I realized that the real answer was very simple.

The question as to what you should write about is like the question “How Should I live my life?” The answer really isn’t that complicated. You just do. You just live. That is as simple as it gets and as complicated an answer as it gets, there is nothing more to it. Likewise, if you want to write, you should just write, there is nothing more to it.

You may ask, but don’t I need to know what to write about? Don’t I need to plan? Don’t I need to learn the different styles of writing? Don’t I need to be interesting? Don’t I need to know who I am writing for? Who is my target audience? What is my purpose for writing whatever it is that I am writing?

No… Don’t think about all that – Just write. In due time, you will discover the things that you are passionate about, in due time you will realize what your style of writing is, who your target audience is, who you want to write for, what message you want to send across the screen, or the glossy pages of a magazine, or whatever medium you choose.

The best way to learn anything is to start doing it.

How do you learn to ride a bike? How to you learn to swim. How do you learn to play a guitar? How do you learn to drive a car? Never mind that, how do you think you learnt to walk? Too often we ponder upon the result of our actions for too long and never actually see any result because we never really try to do that thing.

The biggest price that you pay for an action is the price of not taking it.

Categories
Entertainment Philosophy Self Development

Zindagi – Enigma: The Greatest Show on Earth

On Saturday, September 7th ,2013, I performed a mix of Hindi and English prose at Shri Kshatriya Mitra Mandal, Toronto's (SKMM Toronto) annual function at Rose Theatre in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.

Zindagi Enigma is philosophical examination of the life of an individual from the birth of his child going backwards in time, meeting his soul mate, starting work and experiencing uncertainties of his career, going to college while searching for him identity, conflicts with religious beliefs handed down to him, falling in love for the first time, growing up as child, and then finally his first breathe at birth and then it all begins – The Greatest Show on Earth.

Due to time constraints, the act was cut short. If I get a chance, I shall post record the full version some day, but for this, enjoy! 🙂

For those who have asked me whether this is story is based on my life, the answer is no. This story and the characters in it are fictitious and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental.

 

Categories
Enlightenment Philosophy Self Development

My Prayer

I pray for wisdom of a 100 year old, imagination of a 6 year old, curiosity of a 2 year old, energy of a 20 year old and audacity of a 17 year old!

I pray for steadfastness of a loyal married man, the power of unconditional love of a new mother, the equanimity of an enlightened monk, the passion of a first time lover and the universal connectedness of a prodigy.

I pray for the deep understanding of the just, the burning desire of a new soul searcher, the unwavering firmness of an incorruptible king, and the indestructible courage of a warrior of the highest order.

I pray for the peace that exists in the deepest trenches of oceans and in the furthest regions of the cosmos.