I live for me

I live for me

Selfish, right? Even when I thought first of all, I dismissed the thought as being selfish. But there was something about this though that kept me bothered for a long time. Like a recurring dream, it disturbed me every day. Finally one day I decided to be fair with the thought & gave it a chance. After a long battle I realized; though it is selfish but true. It is an integral part of the human psychology. It is an integral part of US.

Then I though about the most selfless person I heard of in my life. Mahatma Gandhi was the first thought. Boy I bowed with respect but then I realized, though he has done a lot for all of us yet he did it because he thinks that’s right. There was something inside him which will not allow him to live for himself. He lived for others so that he can live in peace with himself. He devoted himself because he finds peace & satisfaction in living for others. When I gave a considerate thought I realized that in turn he did all that so that he can be in peace with himself. He fought for Indians because he himself cannot bear the pain of seeing them in pain.

Then I realized that yes, he lived for us but why, because he wanted to live for himself. His peace, satisfaction & happiness lied in helping & caring others. Undoubtedly he was a saint but even saints choose path selfishly.

Then I tried to follow it in my own life. Previously whenever I do something for others I feel proud to help them & when I don’t get any help I feel disappointed. The fear of that disappointment held me back in doing well for others.

That day I realized why was I so wrong in feeling myself great or awesome for helping others. I thought I was a very selfless person & felt proud in that. Unfortunately I was wrong & fortunately I realized that.

I realized that when I am helping you, I am doing it for me। I do it because I want to help you. I am not selfless in helping you. I am quite selfish. As soon as I started living by this thought I never feel disappointed. Everything came so naturally. I help you because I want to. Because I feel like & because of me. So when you don’t help me I don’t mind really as I have not done anything for you. Whatever I have done in my life I have done it for me, my satisfaction, and my happiness. So there’s no point in saying that I live for others but others are selfish. Good or bad, we are all selfish. Strange, a seemingly selfish thought proved so valuable to me What about you???

Arpit

Strength Is Might

Strength is might (शक्ती पुज्निये है )

We Indians are well-known for our style of greeting others. We bow our head, & press our hands together; I noticed that we pray like this too.
We greet the god in the others when we meet them. That’s the greatness of our culture. We are taught to be humble since we are born. However there’s a great difference between choose to be humble & passively being humble.
If I go to a terrorist & ask him to surrender, practically I can be called a fool. Yes, I deserve that. I am trying to be polite when I don’t have any other choice. I am not choosing to be polite; I am bound to be polite.
I see practically most of us living with this rule. We think it’s our culture & greatness to be polite. Yes it is, but not, when we don’t have any other choice. How can I make a choice when practically I don’t have any choice?
I was taught that even a God like Rama bowed to Ocean to give him path, that’s our greatness & culture. I agree that is Lord Rama’s beautiful character & strength. We should follow him for that. But According to Ramayna , ocean refused & Lord Rama then took out an arrow to make his own way, Rama had a choice. 9 out of 10 of us, If given a bow; strong enough to vaporize the whole ocean; we wont request it first, to give us way. We will threaten it to give us way. That’s the character strength of Rama. He had the choice but still he was humble. He chose to be humble when he could choose effectively not to be.
Now If I would be in place of Rama & I bowed in front of the ocean to give me path. Can you call it my strength or greatness? No you won’t & you shouldn’t. I would be having no choice. So I would be doing what I could.
A person having that arrow to dry the ocean & me is left with practically no difference. He’s doing what he can do & I am doing what I can!!!
Being humble is only great when you choose it & can choose not to be. If you have to be polite & have no other choice. You can be called effective, practical & cowardly but for sure you cannot be called great & that’s what we used to be. We were Great not coward.
Be mighty before being polite. That’s the key & that’s what we had been doing since centuries.

Arpit

Evil

Evil Strikes Back

Americans trained Taliban, to use them against an enemy & one ill-fated day, Taliban attacked America. Thousands were killed on American soil. A hand crafted for destruction attacked the crafter itself. Being humans, we empathize with the sufferers & we forgot the lesson lies underneath. If stated in one line it will say

Evil always consumes the creator.

Assume somebody who is good to me but bad to others. Personally, I failed to feel immune & have a reason why, one day he will not turn bad against me. Right now he definitely has a reason, to be good to me but inherently he’s bad & that’s his nature. Unfortunately I saw people getting close to someone like that & one day came out crying, that they are hoodwinked. What they do not understand is that the person is always looking for an opportunity to do that & finally he got one!!!!

The same mistake we repeat with our children, we teach them to lie to others. Sometimes to avoid a call, sometimes acquaintance we do that. Indirectly we teach them how to cheat & when one day they cheat us; we feel bewildered. If we get out of our emotion of having pity on ourselves, we will see that it is perfectly natural. You teach them evil & now they are making you taste it.If a terrorist asked me or you about details of a person to kill him, it’s so natural to lie to him. What’s important here is the fact that I am still cheating but I am doing it for a reason, a noble cause. As I always believe .It’s so important to do right things in one’s life; but it is more important to do them for the right reason. A right thing done for the wrong reason becomes wrong. When my child lies on my instruction I save my two hours & I jeopardize at least to lives, mine & his.

I know it feel so good to train a clown & make him work for you. It feels amazing when you train a dog to bite others & he does that. But it feels so helpless when that dog can think & one day bites you back on someone else’s call.

It’s not bad to lie or cheat if one is doing it for a noble cause but if done for small things like promotion, carrier, money, relations. If you are making others suffer for your pleasure, it is evil & one day will consume the creator. It will consume YOU.

Arpit

It does not look that stupid, when you are a part of it

Punam said...
Dear thinking writer,why don't you write something on a subject like instinct, gut feeling and decision making? this is a very intriguing topic and I am unable to think through.I look forward to your views on this.

It does not look that stupid, when you are a part of it

I know I may not exactly writing what punam asked me to. This is a view I conceived a long back & it relates with GUT feeling & decision making.

I always looked at the choices people make & every time I figured out a better choice. Surprisingly it always appeared like obvious to me too. That makes me feel if I am better in decision making than all of them or they are plain dumb.

The finding keep me bothered for a long time.Why people don't see the real big picture & why do they take half hearted decisions? Slowly but surely I found out that being there is completely different than reading or thinking about it".I realized they are not plain dumb & even I was not that smart. But that never meant that I took it as it was.

I decided to challenge it. I have seen people taking good decisions, I admit only a few of them but they do take it.

I dig a little deep into it & I found that the more important a decision becomes for me, More foolishly will I behave.Somehow, somewhere I as a human has developed a tendency of taking bad decisions when they matter most.You should ask If that's what we do then why do those decisions work for us. It's really simple, almost always taking a decision is much more important than taking a right decision.That's why they worked. But just because they worked it does not mean we stop looking for better.

I starved for reason & I found it. I will state it as

"When you go too close to a problem, you become a part of the problem"

When you get attached emotionally,physically or mentally with a situation, you lose your ability to see & understand the things in the way you saw them normally. Our senses do interfere with our ability to make a decision. At that point we do two things simultaneously

1. Thinking about how to solve the problem
2. Relating our good & bad experiences (including about people involved with solution) with the problem & becoming a part of the problem slowly, surely

Now as we are slowly getting attached to the problem If you solve it quickly, it would be easier. I have seen people taking quick decisions & yes it is effective.

You stop thinking about it & just take a decision by getting completely associated with the problem i.e. by using your gut feeling. I saw people employing that . It is effective too.

Third & most unexplored part is to get abstracted from the problem. See it not as a person who is solving it but as a observer who is observing someone solve that problem.

It is right that " It does not look that stupid when you are a part of it". So the most efficient way is to get out of the scene all of a sudden & see what are you doing. Be the third person & analyze if its the right choice.Yes its not me better than you.It never was.I saw that third person always takes a better decision.

That's why having a hierarchy in a company makes sense. The third person can see & solve your problems in a better way than you can be. So whenever you can't solve a problem you approach him & most of the time he gives you a solution & you say he is good. Unfortunately he is not that good,but the reason making him good is good. He is just a third person, emotionally detached from the scene. He can see the problem in your solution finding approach as it is not his approach.

If you can see your approach in that way.then that's the key of problem solving & decision making.

"Don't be a part of it. You will notice the stupidity".

Arpit

Even This Shall Pass Away

Even This Shall Pass Away

We use this statement whenever we face sorrow, sufferings or pain. Though I never understood fully how can sorrow pass away but happiness stay. The thought seems inherently fallacious & tops the list of things that disturbs me often.

I was a small kid when my mother told me to study hard for 10 days in exam & then I will have vacations. I was jubilant, I worked very hard as exams were somethings made to make me suffer. They were the price I needed to pay to get my vacations, my share of happiness.

It was first day of my vacations. I was at top of the world but so disappointingly last day came & I was forced to think If exams the evil, the suffering; is short lived & the vacations, the happiness; is permanent? Then I came to realize happiness or sorrow, pain or joy will come & go, what will be important for me & all of us is to enjoy them equally. I got this fact fairely early, but I guess people knew it earlier than me & possibly few will never got it right!!! Let me show you how?

ONCE in Persia ruled a king,

Who upon his signet ring

’Graved a motto true and wise,

Which, when held before his eyes,

Gave him counsel at a glance

Fit for any change or chance.

Solemn words, and these were they:

“Even this shall pass away.”

Trains of camel through the sand
Brought him gems from Samarkand;

Fleets of galleys through the seas

Brought him pearls to rival these.

Yet he counted little gain

Treasures of the mine or main.

"What is wealth?" the king would say;

Even this shall pass away.”

’Mid the revels of his court,

In the zenith of his sport,

When the palms of all his guests,

Burned with clapping at his jests,

He, amid his figs and wine,

Cried: “Oh, precious friends of mine,

Pleasure comes, but not to stay;

Even this shall pass away.”

Lady, fairest ever seen,

Was the bride he crowned his queen.

Pillowed on his marriage bed

Softly to his soul he said:

“Though no bridegroom ever pressed

Fairer bosom to his breast,

Mortal flesh must come to clay

Even this shall pass away.”

Fighting in a furious field,

Once a javelin pierced his shield,

Soldiers with a loud lament

Bore him bleeding to his tent.

Groaning, from his wounded side,

“Pain is hard to bear,” he cried.

“But, with patience, day by day,

Even this shall pass away.”

Towering in the public square,

Twenty cubits in the air,

Rose his status grand in stone;

And the king, disguised, unknown,

Gazing on his sculptured name,

Asked himself: “And what is fame?

Fame is but a slow decay

Even this shall pass away.”

Struck with palsy, sere and old,

Standing at the gates of gold,

Spake him this, in dying breath:

“Life is done, and what is death?”

Then, in answer to the king,

Fell a sunbeam on the ring,

Answering, with its heavenly ray:

“Even death shall pass away.”

THEODORE TILTON.

Making of the joker -- Part II

Making of the joker -- Part II

There were a lot of topics in my engineering course. There were good topics, bad topics, irrelevant topics, insane topics & awesome topics & unfortunately awesome topics were very few. However the deal was very raw. It was to gather 30 questions, (not 300 this time!!) search for the most brilliant answers to these 30 questions & then to do what I was really good at; Cram them by Heart!!!. They wanted me to do what I had already done so many times. Amazingly convenient & deservingly absurd!!!
Choice was not easy for me. I decided not to cram anything or read to get passing score. I tried to challenge everything I read. Initially, It was like a part of me was saying to move ahead, as the topic has already been crammed. It surely looked insane to any spectator. I read a topic. It was crammed by me & I was still reading it to understand, what it was actually. Initial days of changed reading habits were turning out to be tougher than I anticipated.
After lot of hustle I started questioning the theories & getting huge amount of frustration in return. It was a 3 step process I remember

1. Read a theory
2. Challenge It!!
3. Find someone with whom you can share your thoughts

I have never done a tougher job in my life than to get Step 3 done. Gradually I was surrounded by all who were crammers one way or the other. So 5 out of 10 times I challenge a theory & can’t satisfy my challenge but I believe rest 5 times was worth & amazing.
After spending a lot of struggling time with the book, I sat in the exam. Interestingly I only studied 1 subject out of 6 this way & I didn’t get any time to study rest 5. I was scared. I used to walk into examination hall like a king, as I always knew the questions & the answers to those questions. But that time story was different. People were confident & I was scared. Then it began.

Again all of us sat in a Hall. It was a good time to make reputations & automatically it seemed like a very bad time to play the gamble I was playing. I sat there & I was very nervous. It was like I could get 99 & why I chose not to? At that moment all my challenge theories had buried & the old Joker was in front of me, staring on me & bidding bye to me. Fortunately it began. I saw the questions & it was like a puzzle. It drained me in 3 hours.I loved those 3 hours & as a result I got 75 out f 100 & people even got 95 .

Wow! Was I simply dumb or stupid. I chose 78 + 3 hours of enjoyment + 4 months of struggle instead of 95 + 3 hours of labour. People were playing with same spirit. 99 out of 100 were celebratable in college even. But this time I was not playing it. I was watching it. Trust me when you are part of it. It doesn’t look that stupid!!!! But from there It looked like one of the biggest mistakes we have made to ourselves.

I remember all of them were about to be engineers. They were supposed to take this country forward by solving immense puzzles of the world. Yet they could not saw the puzzle they were a part of. World was spinning in front of me & people were celebrating. It was unique but painful. I think it was the pain. Pain of transformation.I was pushing 10 years old joker out.It deserved to pain

Arpit

Making of a joker-Part 1

I was in class 10th when I felt it first time. My mom told me to study hard as 10th was board exam year. If I study well I will have a great life. It was just matter of a year of hard work & enjoyment of whole life. I was given a choice & The choice was obvious & being smart & obedient, I worked hard & got ok if not good marks.

I was in class 11th. My teacher told me that up to now it was a piece of cake & I thought WHAT!!!!! I wasted my 16 years on what turned out to be a piece of a cake. Why didn’t they offer me actual thing before. It did not make any sense to me but ok, yesterday is history I thought & listened to my teacher. He told all of us that these 2 years will make or break our life. It was again 2 years of hard work & lifetime of enjoyment. There was no choice. Only a dumb or true daring person would chose 2 years of enjoyment & lifetime of struggle & me being neither, chose what was obvious.
I studied hard & a lot. I still remember I was weak in mathematics those days. I had managed to learn how to cram sentences but cramming numbers & figures was a different ball game & I was quite bad at that. I still remember I scored pathetic in mathematics but I needed a way out & I found one in time. I was told that people score 99 even 100 out of 100 in mathematics & I didnt’ know how. But At the end it was just easy. I followed that as I needed those 99 or 100 badly. Like most if not all of them I always knew the answer to every question in that exam & rest was a piece of cake. In short We all crammed the whole book!!!! What I got was 99 out of 100 which didn’t mean to me that I was mathematics champ like most of them were. It was just that I had found a way to cram numbers & figures too like most of them had. I had crammed a mathematics book of about 300 questions & answered 30 out of them correctly. Wow!! I was learning the art of education. My first step in becoming a joker of the pack was successful & we all celebrated it.

I entered an engineering college & I woke up. What I see in front of me was a life where I needed to work hard all the days & where the hell was that promised deal of study 1 year & enjoy whole life!! I was being hood winked by eventually all of them. But that’s ok I don’t blame them. Someone must have done same with them too. So I realized that there’s no way out now. Then I took the most important break of my life & saw what’s happening. Upto now I was just following what others were saying because I forgot to question. In that process of cramming & vomiting the crammed material in exam, I lost my power to ask & challenge. This was all a pack of jokers & I was a good joker upto then. When I looked back, I saw, I read every damn book not to learn something interesting or new but to cram it & speak in its way. I looked back on 18 years of my life. I looked at English, Math, Hindi, Science, Economics, History, Geography, Civics blah blah blah. I don’t know if I am different or just too good. But somehow I just managed to abstract myself from the burden of all these names. These were all sets of questions to me & I was told from where to cram the answers. I just have one significant achievement upto now; I have managed to learn how to CRAM!!!!!! Now I had the deal to polish it to do M Tech, PhD or something which would look like 99 out of 100!! of course then I would had awesome life again. Only a fool or a true daring person would refuse it as usual, but this time I was ready to try to start becoming one of them.
(To be continued.....)

Arpit

WHY SHOULD YOU WIN?

"We are not delivering on time, can you take it as a challenge & make future deliveries on time. Because you know we may lose this project If we wont".

Take some time.... Read these lines? What exactly they say?Look beyond the words & try to grasp the meaning...

These were told to me by one of the senior people somewhere in my life.Unfortunately, the sentence is based on an emotion. An emotion so deep rooted inside us that we take it for granted.People call it by different names, Lets call it "FEAR".

Reread the lines now

"We are about to lose, Can you make us win because WE AFRAID TO LOSE."

I heard these lines & sensed something wrong, but What was wrong? I didn't know.Gradually it appeared to me. People want to win not because they love wining or because its their passion to win but because they have fear of losing.

That explained to me the failure of many around & wining of few.Unfortunately,they were so busy try not to lose that they never tried to win.

I read somewhere that Good is the enemy of Great. Why? Because when you try not to lose you do good, but when you try just to win, you left the failure far behind & there are no barriers to where you can go. And only then you do great.

The fear of failure is so deep rooted inside us that we use it always, everywhere.

Most of u work so that we won't be fired. We love our children so that they won't reject us.We make friends so that we won't be left alone.

Doing right things is very important in life, but what I find is more important than that is doing them for the right reason.I have seen majority of people live in the fear of death & they never really lived.

I always saw our life as a game, we know the rules. We play by them. We want to win but why?Why do you want to win. Because you want to impress the girl next door or her father or because you have addiction to win.

I have seen very few people who have that addiction. To them, failure doesn't exist. They play like they are born to win. They play like they are 'win addicts'. They play because they want to win. They want to win because that's the only thing thy know & want. When they play there are no girls next door, There are no opponents. There is no failure. There is no fear,there is no good.Madness is the emotion for them & Great is the word for them .

We have to constantly answer this question in our lives.

Whenever we are playing, are we playing with a fear to lose or a hunger to win?

What is driving that hunger, Is that the fear of losing itself or is it Our addiction to the win

Try to break the fear mould & taste the win completely

Trust me you will never fear the failure again.

Though I cannot go back & tell these words to that person but If I get a chance again I want to say

"I win because I am addicted to win Not because I fear to lose"

Arpit

Your Win WILL make someone lose

I remember the triumph of wining a cricket match & I still remember the pain of losing finals.People often tell me these lame words

• I should focus on wining.
• I should never let anyone suffer because of my deeds
• Winning or losing is just part of the game

I was never & still is not in agreement with these lines. I was told these four lines by same person with different names in diffrent ways. Every time he was in different role,but I sense same words, same meaning & same cowardliness.

It's long & I don't exactly remember when I realised it.Probably my first cricket coach told me that.I lost a big match & was crying alone.He walked to me & sat beside me.Pat my back & said those golden words which still drives my life.

"If triumph of winning is not greater than fear of losing for you.You cannot play.If you want to play; just for the sake of playing a good game,you won't get it.Every game is played by one rule & that's called Wining.YOU MUST PLAY TO WIN."

I remember I challenged his theory. Much senior to me,he listened patiently & quenched all my queries.I asked him how can I beat someone by following killer instinct. I am here for playing the game, not for hurting people.He looked straight in my eye & I still remember the look.Those eye told me I am wrong & those words just carved the fact in my heart

"If You will win,someone will lose".

You can't fight against it.We all want to live for others & give happiness to them.But it always boils down to a choice for me. Either quite playing the game or bear the pain of making others lose.

I still face a lot people who remain in constant dilemma of what to do. I saw them choosing the middle way & uttering the words like 'I play to play'. Trust me; no one in this world play to play.Many time I feel like quitting the game but I cannot, I am born to play it & I will continue to do so.Every time I saw the look & pain of losing in some one's eyes I regret my wining but I can't stop doing that because that's the role I was assigned. That's why we all play.That's why we call it life. It gives you win & It pairs it with pain to someone.

As a player I will continue to play for win but my heart should & will feel the pain of those who will lose because of me.I am not saying I will always win.That's absurd.That's impossible.

But If I lose I will understand, I need to win.I will understand & should forgive the joy shown by my opponent.I know I am sounding emotional here But that's what make us human.We are animals with emotions.I have to play like an animal, I have to win like an animal but in the evening I have every right to feel the pain of those who lost because of me.

I am not just an animal, I am a human too.

Arpit

The Fallacy of Right & Wrong

What is right? What is wrong? I always doubted there is a very thin membrane, separating the two entities or more precisely the states of human mind. I always tried to darken the line with the pencils i had & I was always unsuccessful.
But don't we all face it. Whatever is right for us is wrong for someone else & when that someone is one who cannot be avoided, we have conflicts.We call it ego clashes,incompatibility & a lot of effort fully discovered terms but at the base, there is only one thing.
SELF. We all see what we want & then we weave, reasons to prove it right, though this process is so automated & we have surrendered & so hopelessly dependent on it that we cannot see it happening. Whatever self think is right, becomes right & everyone else becomes wrong.
"Winners are always right". Sounds true to me." There is no wrong way to do right thing" again true. Because the bottom line stays same.If you have won, you have proved in a way that no more matters.You have zeroed on wrongs & defined the right.
HITLER.First thing comes to mind is that he was a sinner. But had Hitler invaded England successfully, he would be a winner. German would be the international language & from the very first day of your lives you would be told what a great visionary he was & then I might be writing this line featuring Englishmen not Hitler .But because he has fallen, his rights had been wronged out & he became a villain
Hitler once said, there's little difference between a truth & a lie. A truth is a lie, spoken so any times, that you have forgotten it's a lie. Quite in accordance with this article i suppose.
To get the solution you need to understand the problem & for that you need to understand rights & wrongs of the people created it.You need to break your rights & wrong mould & try to get into others mould, only then you can help them. Unfortunately we don't do that & problems get mutated. Then they go to someone else who again rests in his cozy shell of right & wrong & mutates them again
So what I say is If you are doing something, which is wrong for others but will benefit them. It should be done. If Wrong can place you at the top & allow you to do things for others. You must do it.But If you are harming others by doing Right/Wrong thing Its beyond the right & wrong

Arpit