Knowing Oneself

"There are no pacts between Lions and men....You won't have eyes tonight, you won't have ears or a tongue. You will wander the underworld blind, deaf and dumb and all the dead will know; This is Hector, the fool who thought he killed Achilles."
- Myrmidon Achilles (Troy)

As thoughts break free, how do you react?

These few days are turning out to be a good test. It is at times like these that you must be mentally very strong. As the mind is relaxed, it is bringing to you many possibilities. All of these possibilities have positivity attached with them. However, you are aware of the fact that some possibilities are, well, not entirely feasible considering how things are playing out right now. Encouraging your mind in a given direction might not be the right thing to do. You consciously decide to be mindful of this but at times, it is difficult to take your mind off the direction. What do you do?

Force yourself to think otherwise? Despise yourself? Get angry at yourself? Punch?

Accept. Accept what you feel. Accept that there are possibilities. Accept that your mind is engaging itself in these possibilities. If you think it is not the right way to go, make a decision not to go this way. You are strong enough to respect the decisions you make. The point is, there is no use forcing yourself against something that is hardwired inside you, something that is natural. If you force yourself, you will not be able to learn how your mind behaves in certain situations. You will not be able to train your mind to be strong, to make the right decisions at times that matter.

15th August, 2009

Let us not forget that freedom and independence comes at a great expense.
Let us not forget how united we were 62 years from today.
Let us not forget the strength that lies within this unity.
Let us not forget the heroes that took the initiative.
Let us not forget the heroes that continued inspite of the massacre.
Let us not forget the heroes that became martyrs with smiles.
The smiles were not of insanity.
The smiles were of trust.
They trusted with the fruits of their sacrifice.

Let us remember our strengths, let us always work on improving our weaknesses.
Let us have more knowledge of the mistakes of the past.
Let us utilize the power of memories.
Let us fire ourselves up with the power of positive emotion.
Let us keep moving.
Let us create a stronger, newer generation that can respect and uphold our traditions.
Let us always be confident, calm and alert.
Let us uphold respect,
Let us uphold peace,
Let us uphold unity.

I am not needed, and I don't need.

You need your family. Family understands. You have your close family which comprises of your mother, father and sister. Then you have another close family which comprises of your friends that you can talk to without mentally calculating the things you are saying to them, just like your immediate family, if not more freely. These are the people that understand you without thought. These are the people you can talk to without carefully formulating your dialogue. These are the people that your Self is comfortable with. If you are not comfortable with someone, don’t bother.

This is a pretty goal oriented and sensitive group. But the group doesn't need you nor do you need the group. Don’t let little things disturb your mental stability. Keeping people happy is not a requirement. It's only your personal choice. When you try to make people happy, do you start expecting them to be happy and recognize you as a source of their happiness, thereby expecting more? What are you expecting? Praise? Gratitude? Why? If you want to make people happy expecting something in return, don’t bother. That’s not how it's supposed to be done.

Don’t give them so much importance that any small potential disregard for you by anyone hurts you. Most of them are unwilling to tell you where you went wrong. Most of them will never care for you upto your expectations. This means most of them will not care for you as much as family. Stop expecting them to be acting like family. Detach yourself from these people. It helps you accomplish your task. Do not worry about offending others. You are not needed and you don’t need them. Get away from the crowd. It's temporary. This is evident from most of the dialogue the group engages in. Discussions are usually limited to events and people. Weak. Rarely are ideas discussed. Rarely are emotions discussed. Keep detached.

It's a bit unfortunate that the profession demands a complete opposite and following the above goes against what one would be expected to do if one was training for the profession rigth now. But if you don't follow this, chances are you will not be able to move forward toward fulfilling this.

शुरा सौ पहचानिये
जो लद्दे दिन के हित
पुर्जा पुर्जा कुठ पड़े
कब हो न चाडे खेत,

जो तौ प्रेम खिलन का चाहो,
सीर धर थली गली मोरे आवो।

shura = brave
pehechaniye = know, characterize
jo = one who
lade = fights
deen = poor, unfortunate
kay hait = for the purpose of
purja = part
kath pade = cut down
tab ho = even then
na chaade = doesn't leave
khait = field
jo tau = if you
prem = love
khilan = game
ka chaho = want of
sir = head
dhar = present
thali = hatheli = palm of hand
gali = way, street
morai = mine
aavo = come


A brave person is known as one who fights for the unfortunate. His body gets cut to pieces, but he refuses to retreat from the battle.
If you decide to fall in love with this game, you shall be knocking on my door with your head on your palms.

It's been fun...mostly.

"Live your life to the fullest and play hard, but also have fun."

What does this mean?

It starts off by telling you to live your life to the fullest. Live your life to the fullest, in other words, remain happy all the time. Is it really in your hands to remain happy all the time? I depend on society around me for my happiness, atleast some of it. I think we all do. So that means society is partly responsible for my happiness. So is it not in my hands to live my life to the fullest then?

Ofcourse it is in your hands to live your life to the fullest. Society is partly responsible for your happiness because you put expectations on society. It is difficult to live without expectations. But it is one of the ways to live your life to the fullest.

“….and play hard,..”

Play hard. Hard work is the only thing that is in your hands. Only hard work will give you happiness. Stop dreading the past and wasting now for later. Life is to live. You can’t live without hard work. There’s a difference between living and surviving. When you live life, you are in command. When you survive, you are obeying the command of someone who is living. When you are living, you are playing hard. When you are surviving, you are just playing along. Only hard work will allow you to live your life to the fullest.

“…but…also have fun…”….???

So am I not having fun when I am living my life to the fullest and playing hard?

“Shit, I need to work hard so I can have fun.”
“Damn it, I better finish my work so I can go live my life a little.”
“What kind of crap am I in? As soon as I am outta here, I ma go actually have fun.”

In these cases, you’re working hard, but you’re not having fun. You are criticizing your work and trying to get yourself away from it. You are not enjoying your work. Play hard, work hard, but have fun doing it. There’s nothing wrong with working to get happiness that you don’t get out of said work. But don’t criticize said work. Criticizing your current work will make you dislike it even more. This work is helping you achieve greater fun. Have fun while working at a boring task….simply because of the fact that some hours or days or years from now, you will not have to do the boring task anymore.

0.99 =/= 1.00

Partial knowledge is as dangerous and as useless as no knowledge.

When he was asked why, he said...

"...I was born, and This is who I am."
- Myrmidon Achilles.

Mission: Refresh Confidence.....[Status: 100%]

Aah, and there’s that same smell again…..

“The clock hits time, and it’s the same as last year. Same people and the same rise of emotion, nothing has changed. The beginning seems to be the same, but there is a possibility the end could be different…
I have ME and I have MY TEAM, and starting today, we start running exactly as we did last time. We’ll deal with the finish when it’s in sight, just like last time. My team and I are looking forward to enjoy the start, just like last time. We know this fight requires more than words. We know we have much more than words. Some things have changed. We are Now a team of Lions that just got a taste of what it means to be King, and let me tell you this….. We Like It. With all my sincerity and humility, I wish my team and me Goodluck and Godspeed to the end.”

Let’s run this episode one more time.

Good luck Vijayta,

Mrunal

And that defining moment of Life

//seq_initiate.thought@0.0//

Pressure inculcates the Fun associated with Challenge. A mindset out of this implies Weakness. Would you like to be called Weak?

//.....in progress//


//seq_initiate.thought@0.1//

Humility is the most essential.

//....in progress//

//seq_initiate.thought@0.2//

Question/Problem: Confused? Does said confusion have anything to do outside basic goals?

Answer: Yes

Solution: Stick to basic goal. Discard everything else.

//.....in progress//

....Please Remain Calm.

Mess in Progress....

Please Remain Calm....

Its interesting to see how different people are here. People here seem to be afraid to reveal themselves. Everybody seems so artificial. I am not sure why. All of them are Americans, people that I have lived with for the last six years. Nevertheless, I feel I am in some different, newly conditioned aura where noobs don't exactly remember how they've lived life so far. Bad part is, I am watching myself being dragged slowly towards this. There's nothing new about this place, yet, I and a lot of others seem to be involuntarily changing true nature to adapt.

ASIDE: Maybe its just the lack of desis that makes me feel like this. lol. There is not ONE single true desi that I have come across so far. So many Indians, 32% of our class is Indians. Not one desi that you can call a true to the root desi. You know....like Panchal, or Deep, or Mosavi, or for that matter...even Sammy. Heck, Sammy is far more desi than a lot of Indians here...lol. Peace Sammy...u da mayne.

EDIT: No offense is intended towards desis here. I have lived most of my life with a different group of people. I am not trying to hurt feelings here. People here are different than people I grew up with. That's all.

Maybe I need to give it more time. But I didn't feel like this even when I first moved out to the States. That's what's confusing me. There is no need to change yourselves but I am getting a feeling that somehow people are being compelled to change themselves. You have to study medicine. Thats all you have to do. As long as you study and pass, there's nothing anyone can do to you that could harm you. But I feel a lot of people are failing to grasp this and are being dragged into other stuff. Even academically.

For example, I am being bombarded with 60 different ways to study from people that keep getting them from higher students. This is not bad, as long as you can keep yourself sane and to your goals. Sometimes, when you get a lot of options, you tend to forget your originality. The problem with new ways that take you to the same destination is that these ways are new to your mind. So you have to spend some time learning this way, and then make it part of your lifestyle after getting rid of the old style that was working already. This is taken by our minds as a longer, harder task. This makes us vulnerable to distraction ultimately putting off the adaptation thus adding more lag time to actually working towards your goal. I have also been dragged a bit into this I think.The bad part is, if someone refuses to conform to these ways, there is a chance that their circle will shrink.

But if it's what you gotta do, you gotta do it. When I landed my flight here, I came up to the guard gate asking for my room key. Basically the administration had some problems with housing and I didn't have a place to go to. Arguments and anger was exchanged...Long story short, I was standing there outside wondering what the hell I was going to do. My taxi driver comes up to me and tells me, "I've seen many students like you son. Remember, you are on your own. You gotta find a way for you. No one here gonna get out of their way to help you." He was right, not just about here, but about life in general. People have their own lives, and expecting anything out of their lives is foolishness. Its just hard to live in an individual manner as such. But live and learn.

On a side note, I know less of these other people in my class. But I think these people are the ones that are not being dragged in. They are the ones that have an original way and are sticking fairly well to it. In any case, the aim is to take a rather individual approach to this now. Individuality that doesn't hurt friends or close ones. Individuality with no negative kicks to it. That's the goal. More on this later...

Your Self is on its own. Get a load of this.

Don’t let your ego kill you. You might not be the best. You are probably attempting to become the best. That’s about as far as your current disposition/mentality can carry your ego. Your ego possesses the potential to make you lie to your Self. This is dangerous because it blocks possible improvement of character and Self. Worse, it can drag you into alternate pathways of living under of illusion of being the best. And considering the fact that everybody dies at a point, we don’t have infinite time to live. What one needs to realize is that ego is something separate from one’s entity or one’s Self. It is something that forces your Self to involuntarily involve in action that is harmful.

Wouldn’t you hate it if when you were eating a good meal at the end of your day, someone came up to you and just told you as a matter of fact that you couldn’t eat anymore since he had more authority over your food than you did….even though you had done nothing to deserve being under such authority? Ego is similar to this sort of authority. There is little difference between ego and the man trying take away your food. In the latter case, you actually realize that something unjust is being done to you and feel humiliated. Thus your Self triggers a response to get justice. You deny or fight to keep what you deserve. And chances are, if you rightly deserve the food, no one will be able to take it away from you. With ego, your Self doesn’t really get this privilege. Your ego tells your Self that it is not supposed to think of improving itself since it is just as good as the opponent. Now, your Self can fight it by claiming that its not the best. But this is where the fight ends. Even though your Self rightly deserves justice to that claim, it's not guaranteed justice by default. When ego strikes, your Self cannot do anything but give it a little resistance and hope to get a result while that resistance is still effective.

To actually improve yourself to become the best, it takes a lot of time, patience and effort. Ego has a better chance at this fight against your resistance because of these immense resources that your resistance requires. Ego does not need these resources. It uses illusion to tell your Self to give up its resistance. Illusions don’t need anything concrete to prove them right. Illusions just use the weakness of the eyes they are fooling. Ego uses such illusion. It shows you alternate results that are not resource draining but will never get you to your original goals. This is what is popularly known as a compromise. And once you compromise with an alternate result, ego is nourished. This results in ego further fooling your Self into believing that this alternate result is much more desirable that your original goal.

Why give so much importance to your original goals? Some goals are very difficult while others are easy. Every goal is achievable. Make one goal. There is a certain amount of difficulty involved in achieving this goal. If you find yourself thinking about something that is just as good but is much more easier to do than this goal, MORE OFTEN than more often than not, this is ego fooling your Self. Try to give your Self a better reason to give up your current goal for the alternate than just telling your Self that the alternate has just about the same result without using as much effort. When you originally made the goal, there was a reason behind it. There was a passion attached with it. There was a sense of self worth attached to it. These are the factors that your Self is made of. The alternate does not have these factors. It just has the quality of being easier than your current goal. And just because it is easier, will you completely disrespect your Self by voiding it of all the passion and rationale that it possessed initially?

Don’t measure your life by the end result. End results seldom accurately justify the means. And as far as I am concerned end results are useless. Death is the end. Birth is the beginning. Life is the means of achieving this unpleasant end. This doesn’t mean every person born should just die since death is the end result anyway. This would be the fastest, easiest and most efficient way to achieve the end result of death, wouldn’t it?

Your Self wants you to do something worthwhile before it ceases to exist. The Self is voluntarily putting itself through effort for a fated end for some reason. The reason is not clear. Society? Culture? The purpose of life? Happiness? We don’t know. But we do know that living is an innate necessity of the Self. I will continue on this later since we are now going into a different direction.

Human = Human, =/= American, =/= Indian

My friend's topic on terrorism (9/11: An Indian perspective) made me respond in the following manner. Here is the opening post to this topic. My friend (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=38223781391) says....
"9/11 was horrific. Innocent live were lost - of all religion, of all nationalities. Estimated death toll was over 6,000. We still have horrifying pictures of it impressed in our minds. It was undoubtedly very traumatic. And no way can it be justified.

More importantly however, it happened in American soil.I hear this all the time "This was an attack on the World", "This was not about America, it's against the free world!" or even get asked all the time, "Was that not a big deal in India for you guys?" "We were devastated! Weren't you??" "I still remember what I was doing at that second, dont you?" "Shruti how are you so passive about this!" When I dont really know how to respond to all of these, I get told "Well you hate America ..."

It would be pretty frustrating when someone tells me "You hate America." This is actually disrespectful since even though I live here and consider myself as American as anybody else, the connotation behind the above statement completely voids me being American and my respect for America as a country.

I understand the fragility of the situation. I am a brown person, I was not here when the terror took place. Anyone who was here in person understands the emotion much more than me. So when I don't exhibit as much distress and emotion as the person who was actually here whenever the issue is brought up, there is a possibility that I will be accussed of not being sympathetic enough, since "I don't know!." That's ok, but calling me a hater means you are accusing me of being morally wrong. This is unacceptable.

I guess there is nothing I can do about it but hope and try to explain to him/her that I understand that innocent and helpless people were made victims of a group that is collectively weak, unintelligent and ignorant. I would also make it known to him/her that whenever I see something like this on tv, it infuriates me to my limit regardless of caste, creed, religion or geography of the victim. There is nothing else I can do to explain my emotion against terrorism. But calling me un-American by assuming I don't care about lives lost in America as much as I would care about lives lost in India is just plain disrespectful. I respect this country as my own and I have no reason to have a bias for either.

It is true that I am connected with India to a deeper extent emotionally since my childhood and most of my life was spent there. But this does not mean I am immoral. Moral values of a good citizen usually stay the same in most societies.

Violence is an attribute of the weak.

Violence and using force are for the weak. I have noticed that when I have a problem I want to resolve, I can almost always use violence and brute force to achieve this end. Now, this may create more problems in getting to the desired solution but no one is to say that I won't be using violence to climb these newly created rungs of the problematic ladder. Maybe I successfully do climb this ladder to the very top, maybe I don't. But in any case, my focus today is not on the violence but on me, or any person for that matter, that uses violence to achieve his or her ends.

Basic violent thinking is "I create BANG....I get attention, I get what I need." How can you call this way of getting attention and realizing your ends weak? I call this weak because it is an easier way that might be favorable for one, but is harmful to many. This way is tried as a substitute to the other way where you don't really see the result in the near future, but you don't see immediate and moral harm to humanity as well. It is a difficult feat to accomplish. A weak person is easily apprehended. In this case, he is scared of the fact that he does not have an immediate result. A weak person lacks confidence in himself. In this case, he is inconfident of his capability of achieving the result that might not be immediate.

For example, I want to create my own traffic signal system that I see more sense in than any other. I am a powerful personality that has almost unlimited access. I decide to start my system in the new island that I have secretly discovered. Now the island already has a democracy, so I need to convince the majority that my system works better than whatever they have. I get about 90% resentment since they are unwilling to change their customs. Me and my 10% clearly see that ignorance is holding people back from seeing what I see. I tell myself, "If only they could see what my new system can bring to them...." I have two options here: Either I can shoot some of them down and apprehend a society unwilling to accept, or I can try to keep persuading them and finding more ways to make them see sense.

If I used the gun, they would accept my system almost immediately (considering I am more powerful than any force on their island) and would then see the sense I was talking about. But the sense would come at a cost of the human beings that were shot down in the beginning, and this would be a permanent dent in my effort that will never be repaired (You can't bring back dead people to life). When I try to use the other way, I see little, if any progress for the next year. But I know what I believe in is correct, and if implemented, it will work towards the greater good without any moral disobedience or dents. So I decide to find ways to get support by small scale demonstrations and such. I am now about 85 years old and on my deathbed and still the persuasion exists. There is little visible change in the traffic system as I say my final goodbye. But whatever little progress I made does pay off in the long run and the traffic system changes. And the society realizes what it should've realized 100 years ago.

In both cases, I am working towards what I believe is right. When I use force to impose this belief, I am not strong enough, or not capable enough to solve the problem without killing or hurting my own kind. If I die without seeing results, I would be incapable of making the society realize something good instantly. In either case, I would be weak in one way or the other, right?

Not really. The first alternative resulted in death of a human being. This would mean I was weak as I was not able to respect an individual's basic right to live against the power of a gun. Also, the fact that I decided to kill a particular human being over another is not justified. Considering the killing was meant for the future betterment of the society as a whole, why did person A have to die in particular over B? There is no sure answer. There is no justification. You are weak because you will be unable to explain the widow why she in particular had to become the widow against her will.

For the second case, I have not inflicted direct harm on the society. Yes, a lot more people died due to the bad traffic system that I was unable to change compared to the few that would've died if I were to pull the trigger a couple times in the beginning. But I am not directly responsible for this loss. I was strong enough to respect the right of an individual human being over the power that I had at my disposal. What happened to the society was a result of the decision of the society. It was in my hands to try to convince them while respecting their individual rights which I did.

There are other points at which it can be further reinforced that a violent action is a weak action but I will hold off on formulating this any further since it is 0442 and the fact that long walls of text are usually not very much appreciated.

Negative connotation not intended.

I have yet to meet someone my age who is evidently comfortable with their "serious" relationship with the opposite sex. I am not against having girlfriends or boyfriends, I just think this is not the age yet. Atleast not for me. I always wonder why people, especially guys, indulge in such a complicated thing as a girl. Girls are almost always associated with some sort of drama. Guys are supposed to be carefree and spontaeneous. Most girls at this age are not like this. This is not necessarily a bad thing so much as it is a difference in character. Compromising your natural character for a girl might not be a bad thing if you are trying to gain experience on successful relationships. But I really laugh at that concept. Ok, it teaches you how to be responsible. But right now?

Don't get me wrong. I am not against following the textbook of correctness but I get the feeling that sometimes, what's right is not worth upsetting the natural preset.

Or maybe, as a lot of them say...."You have to experience the relationship to appreciate it's beauty."

I say, "Meh..... I like chillin with my buddies that I haven't lost to girls. And none of them are losers that smoke and drink alchohol to 'make up' for their singularity. lol."