Something's wrong here...

I've read that if I learn to exhibit positive behaviour, I will end up becoming a person with positive-thinking; that if I imitate successful people, I will become successful. I even read somewhere that if you simply improve your vocabulary, you will become intelligent because intelligent people have big vocabularies!! Bah! I've been building my vocabulary consciously over the past many years and yet am nowhere near being a genius than when I started out :-p

The underlying assumption in all these theories is that changing one's external behaviour causes a change in the internals. Nothing can be farther from the truth; while I do appreciate the good intention of these self-help authors (they only intend to do good to their readers), the results are often not very satisfactory. This is because their approach is flawed: if you want to make shiny jewellery, you don't make it out of iron and then give it a gold coating; instead, you make it out of gold and then polish it. Likewise with changing oneself - you can't appear to be a perfect gentleman forever if you really are not one. A rotten egg will always smell bad, no matter how much perfume you smear it with. A good-looking shell on an ugly interior is no match for a beautiful interior, even if unpolished.

The key to becoming a better person is to become a better person. Sorry, I couldn't resist that one <g>. What I wanted to say was that you can't aim at become a better person merely by adopting certain manners of speech and behaviour, without bothering to understand the underlying character traits that give rise to those manners of speech and behaviour in the first place. For example, just acting courteously on a few occasions, or even a lot of occasions, doesn't make me a good person. The pretence will have, of course, convinced many people about my goodness, but that's besides the point. The big question here is "has it made me a good person?" Being a good person is not contingent on being courteous, just as being optimistic is not contingent on cocky talk. Of course, when you become a good person, you'll tend to be courteous; when you are an optimistic person, you'll tend to talk about the positive aspects. But approaching matters the other way round is futile and only ends up getting you frustrated and wondering where you went wrong.

Likewise for every other "attitude" that you're trying to learn: it's better to try and analyse the underlying trait and work on acquiring it rather than stop with adopting those fancy "positive" attitudes. A clarification might be in place here: adopting new attitudes after one understands those traits, in order to consciously develop oneself internally and externally is fine; focussing only on external behaviour is not.

I am not sure if I got my point across. In case you're keen on discussing this further, leave me a comment / an instant message / email and we can take it from there :-)

Face the truth

I'd left you last with that cryptic statement, "feelings are automated thoughts." Let me elaborate a bit on that.

When we feel something, it's generally a reaction to something that we are thinking about, or an event that is happening now. It can also result from a recollection of a past event ("happy / sad memories"). Now, let me ask something - what would you feel about an event that's completely unprecedented? An event whose very nature (good / bad, etc.) is still undetermined but with which you're in contact nevertheless? You wouldn't know what to feel, is my guess. And I am willing to bet that the reason for that is you haven't been trained to react to the circumstance in question. In other words, you don't know what to feel! Arguing conversely, we arrive at the stunning conclusion that you can only feel something if you know what feeling is appropriate for the occasion!!

This leaves us with this - that our feelings are not things that pop into our minds uncontrollably; rather, they are thoughts that we think, though without realising that we do so. Most of the time, we don't even realise that we have a choice - to not feel in a particular way. And so it is that we let ourselves down by saying, "I can't help feeling bad about it" when the truth, maybe a difficult one, is that we can feel different if only we choose to do so. No feeling needs to have a vice-like grip on us. We can be happy even when most people would expect us to be sad. A death / separation does not mean that we must feel sad.

P.S:
1. I have no claims to the originality of the above statements. These views have been expressed many times by many people. I am merely trying to simplify things. Have I been successful? I'll let you be the judge.

2. See this - http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Epistemology_Emotions.html

Stream of consciousness

A long time ago, when we were at college (now that's really a long time ago), our English professors hammered into us a style of writing called "Stream of consciousness" and recommended James Joyce as one of its exponents. I remember trying to pick up a book of his and browsing through it. I also remember thinking, "Does this qualify as serious writing? Why don't they rather call it 'stream of words'?" because that's how it seemed to me - a stream of words without any serious attempt at creating coherent sentences.

But then, I had missed the point, for "stream of consciousness" is just a way of imitating the seeming randomness of our thought process. One just writes as one thinks. There's no attempt to arrange thoughts as we normally do. In a twisted way, it's a challenge to the reader - he cannot hope to understand a "stream of consciousness" without focussing his energies on the printed stuff. Talk about strategies!

Anyway, all that background was just a means of apologising for what's to come now! :-D I am going to shoot out my thoughts at you, hapless reader, in the hopes of eliciting a comment or two :-p No, was just kidding. You know how it is sometimes with these thoughts - they just demand to be expressed and so it is with me now. Now that that's out, let me move on.

The topic of the day is human existence and its purpose. During one of my recent lows, I was wondering what it is I was meant to achieve in this lifetime (these thoughts hit you when you're down, if you know what I mean). Richard Bach, one of the authors I admire, says in his Illusions, "Here's a simple test to find out if your mission on earth is complete: if you are alive, it's not." So, my mission is not done yet. Hmm, all right! But what exactly is it? Somebody (who must have been famous, else I wouldn't have come across the quote) said, "Don't look for a purpose, create it." Yeah, right! If I had known how to do that, I wouldn't be pondering these questions, would I?

But that's not to say there's no merit in that quote. You see, most of the time, we, the people, attach value to things. We buy stuff, we build up a store of possessions that we value / treasure / cherish, etc. Intrinsically, those possessions do not have value. Most of the time anyway.

For example, gold gets its importance on our earth only by merit of its being rare as compared to a few other abundant materials like iron. Of course, its cause is also helped by the fact that it is a relatively difficult material to tarnish and doesn't require too much to effort to maintain its status quo vis-a-vis the elements, if status quo is the phrase I'm looking for. Which is why platinum looks all set to become to the next major metal. But that'll have to wait for a discussion on metallurgy and jewellery.

So, coming back to what we were discussing, it is us humans who attach importance to things. Ditto with people. A person who is not yet known to us does not mean much to us. But we'd be willing to go out of the way to help a friend whom we consider dear to us. And so it is that we grieve when we lose a friend, either because he passed away, or because we broke up with him.

When we look even more closely at this, we discover that we cultivate relationships with people for two reasons: a. to be happy b. to be happy

If I were PG Wodehouse, I would have said, "The discerning reader would see at once that reasons a and b are identical." Since I am not him (and he would probably be grateful for that), I will simply state the reason why I put down two identical reasons.

You see, originally, I intended to list the following two: a. to be happy b. to share happiness. But on what I would like to call maturer reflection (a phrase I borrow from one of the many stories I read during my school days), it occurred to me that we can't really share happiness. I mean, how can you "share" something that's so totally private, personal and subjective? You can only state the reason for your happiness and the other person, if he's your well-wisher, can choose to be happy about it. In other words, you can't really share your happiness; you can only hope that your enunciation of the reasons for your joy will induce in the other person a similar feeling. But again, why do we really want to say what makes us happy? Why can't we simply be and let go at that? I feel it's because we think that such an action would cause even more happiness. But you see, happiness is not something that is caused by events; rather, it is released by it. Looking at it another way, we can choose to be happy any time we want; we don't have to lay down conditions for our happiness.

Now, I acknowledge that can be a rather sobering thought. I mean, how would you explain the sheer feeling of exhilaration that you feel as you ride your mobike at the speed of 100 km an hour? Because we choose to be exhilarated? The answer, surprisingly, is yes. But this choice happens at a more subconscious level. IOW, feelings are automated thoughts!

With that rather intriguing line, dear reader, I exit. The stage is all set for you to shoot your questions / brickbats at me.

Pull yourself up!

I had been on a trek to this place called Shivneri earlier this month. What attracted me was not the fact that it was the birthplace of Chattrapati Shivaji; rather, it was the prospect of dangling on a rope a few hundred feet above the ground and climbing about a hundred feet or so and reaching our destination on all fours that really settled the matter. Of course, to be a bit more honest (and practical), the rope was secured at both ends by mountain-climbing professionals to whom you trust the job of keeping the ropes secured and as a side effect, secure your life. Since I am now sitting at my desktop writing this, you may safely conclude that they did their jobs well!

The climb itself turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax, at least for me, for it seemed to be too easy and was over in a matter of minute!! Not that I was super fit or anything; far from it (weighing in at just a bit over 50 measly kilograms, I dare not call myself fit). It's just that I consider myself very strong (no snickering please!) and would do a lot of things just to prove a point. That's one of my inherent weaknesses. Now, that's a confession.

During one of my earlier treks (to Harishchandragad), another set of professionals promised that we would do some serious rock-climbing (more than 1000 staggering feet!) and now am looking forward to it eagerly.