Busy to blog?....Naa...Guess I'm Lazy...Will be back soon before graduation!
Thanks for visiting!
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Trying to Graduate!
Busy to blog?....Naa...Guess I'm Lazy...Will be back soon before graduation!
Thanks for visiting!
Monday, July 17, 2006
Mono or Di(e)alogue
Let me see if I can articulate what I am thinking now!
Is it possible to talk and make sure that we are not boring the other person by talking whatever we wanted to talk?
Did it come near to what I wanted to say…?
Naaa - not exactly….it's confusing!
Okay…once again!
Is there a faint possibility to talk and not bore the person that you are talking to!!
Now?
How about a ….NO!
Okay…last attempt!
Can I talk to anyone, whatever I want to talk, and can I do that in a way that I don't bore them?
Well! To hell with this!
Why don't I take a post to do this?…Okay..! here I go!
Everyday, there are quite a few instances…I have people talking to me for a while and all I can see is there mouth moving! Because, what they talk is no way related to my vicinity of interest, inclination, knowledge, affinity…or whatever it is. They would just talk and talk and talk without even paying attention to the fact that I am not listening to them!!
I used to scream….
"Oh God! Can't you instill some slightest amount of sense in to this people's brain cells? Can't you see that my responses are just smiles, sounds and start-and-end with just one-word most of the times!"
For once, God laughed the heavenly a** out and said "Try listening to yourself"!!
May be I sound like that to a lot of people! "HELL! YEAH!" ….a crowd shouted right behind me!!!
Good that I have that infinitesimal sense to acknowledge it.
"Could it be possible to change?" I asked myself…!
"Why don't you write a blog on it? May be you will follow atleast for the heck of it once you post it …" said the idealist in me!
A few sensible moments on anything would lead to decent way out of a tough situation.
What do we have here?
Target: Conversation
Constraints:
1. We need to make sure we don't bore the opponent (sometimes it could be a crowd)
2. We need to gain something out of it.
Every situation in this world is not a win-win kind. However, we can try our best and proceed to the maximum extent we can!
The solution here… obviously lies on the Topic of conversation!
The key to talk and not bore someone is to engage them on a topic of their own interest….! The most amazing thing about people around you is that the area of specialization and knowledge is markedly different from one soul to another. And the best part is that, to a certain extent it would overlap with yours, depending upon your versatility and tolerance limit….Well, in this case even if you are not knowledgeable on their interests, you would end up learning something from them…there you go…you gain something.
Now…am I missing something here….if I keep on talking about their interests…? What about mine? How in the world would I get to talk what I want to talk? I mean my interests my hobbies…my inclinations…affinities etc.
I have one word for you! Reciprocation!
Most of the people reciprocate when you listen to them. When you talk about their interests, find a way to connect to your passions, your interests. When you do so? It's easy for the other to respond and react to your affinities. Don't you think? Or am I missing something?
What about the people who don't reciprocate and not listen to your interests and talks? Well, you know what? They really don't know what they are missing! And after all you have gained something by listening to them…don't you think?
Life is simple! All you have to do is to acknowledge your likes and dislikes and practice it on others as well. Once you know how not to something that you dont want to see from others, its get beautiful!
And the next time I bore you…make sure that the sounds, one-word responses and "get the hell outta here" looks ….as obvious as you can!
Is it possible to talk and make sure that we are not boring the other person by talking whatever we wanted to talk?
Did it come near to what I wanted to say…?
Naaa - not exactly….it's confusing!
Okay…once again!
Is there a faint possibility to talk and not bore the person that you are talking to!!
Now?
How about a ….NO!
Okay…last attempt!
Can I talk to anyone, whatever I want to talk, and can I do that in a way that I don't bore them?
Well! To hell with this!
Why don't I take a post to do this?…Okay..! here I go!
Everyday, there are quite a few instances…I have people talking to me for a while and all I can see is there mouth moving! Because, what they talk is no way related to my vicinity of interest, inclination, knowledge, affinity…or whatever it is. They would just talk and talk and talk without even paying attention to the fact that I am not listening to them!!
I used to scream….
"Oh God! Can't you instill some slightest amount of sense in to this people's brain cells? Can't you see that my responses are just smiles, sounds and start-and-end with just one-word most of the times!"
For once, God laughed the heavenly a** out and said "Try listening to yourself"!!
May be I sound like that to a lot of people! "HELL! YEAH!" ….a crowd shouted right behind me!!!
Good that I have that infinitesimal sense to acknowledge it.
"Could it be possible to change?" I asked myself…!
"Why don't you write a blog on it? May be you will follow atleast for the heck of it once you post it …" said the idealist in me!
A few sensible moments on anything would lead to decent way out of a tough situation.
What do we have here?
Target: Conversation
Constraints:
1. We need to make sure we don't bore the opponent (sometimes it could be a crowd)
2. We need to gain something out of it.
Every situation in this world is not a win-win kind. However, we can try our best and proceed to the maximum extent we can!
The solution here… obviously lies on the Topic of conversation!
The key to talk and not bore someone is to engage them on a topic of their own interest….! The most amazing thing about people around you is that the area of specialization and knowledge is markedly different from one soul to another. And the best part is that, to a certain extent it would overlap with yours, depending upon your versatility and tolerance limit….Well, in this case even if you are not knowledgeable on their interests, you would end up learning something from them…there you go…you gain something.
Now…am I missing something here….if I keep on talking about their interests…? What about mine? How in the world would I get to talk what I want to talk? I mean my interests my hobbies…my inclinations…affinities etc.
I have one word for you! Reciprocation!
Most of the people reciprocate when you listen to them. When you talk about their interests, find a way to connect to your passions, your interests. When you do so? It's easy for the other to respond and react to your affinities. Don't you think? Or am I missing something?
What about the people who don't reciprocate and not listen to your interests and talks? Well, you know what? They really don't know what they are missing! And after all you have gained something by listening to them…don't you think?
Life is simple! All you have to do is to acknowledge your likes and dislikes and practice it on others as well. Once you know how not to something that you dont want to see from others, its get beautiful!
And the next time I bore you…make sure that the sounds, one-word responses and "get the hell outta here" looks ….as obvious as you can!
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Educate your way out
A few weeks ago I got to see an ABC episode on India rising, which is pretty old and popular in the blogosphere now. Though this episode had its own pluses and minuses, I liked it! Especially some parts where, the Sardar's response to the host's "Is India catching up?" question, and a don't-judge-the-book-by-its-cover person asking for an email address, so on and so forth! A patriot's view I guess!
The final few seconds of the show is what I was gripped upon.
"In India, education is worshiped…. and parents will skip meals to send them to private schools…."
How true!
A few years ago, a group of us had a discussion on this same issue. So, my connectivity-speed to those lines of thoughts was obvious and immeasurably fast.
To reiterate, in India, it is true that the middle/lower class families, in a way, skip meals to provide a reasonably high quality education to their kids. It is true that the reverence to education and educators are injected into each and every kid's brain from infancy. It is true that education is worshipped!
I was brought up that way! I saw and lived a life where people were sent to schools that were beyond their quality of lifestyle. Most of the time, the monetary struggle to make this happen was transparent that the responsibility automatically seeps in. At that age, with that brought up, the best thing that the kid can do is to educate their way out! The kid without his/her knowledge realizes this at a very early age. A single digit class rank is the most important thing in the world for almost every responsible student in the class. If parents skip meals, students skip fun, sometimes. As I said earlier here, there are a whole bunch of students who did not do what they wanted to do just to fit in this 'educate your way out' lifestyle.
Is this good? Are we in the right direction?....are the obvious questions that pop up. One of the dangerous byproducts of education is sensibility. Well, with exceptions apart, it's simple! Education breeds sensibility and in turn results in responsibility and growth in the right direction. So, a better educated society will proceed in a progressive direction much faster than the one which is less educated!
Presently, the society that we live in is afraid of being left uneducated! The spirit of competitiveness is so strong that we are just doing what we are supposed to do without thinking about what we deserve! "Once you start thinking what you deserve you become soft - Greg Popovich". Do what you are supposed to do and do that in style, what you supposed to get will automatically fall in! I am not talking Karma theory here…! What I am trying to say is to stop cribbing and start living!
This argument may have a completely different perception if you take the reservation issues into consideration, which I don't want to delve in to. Nevertheless, we are going great guns on the first step! Educate yourself first to start fighting the next step…!
As I said earlier, lot of people did not have the luxury to do what they want to do to fit in and live a life devoid of mediocrity. We have loads of Sachin's and A.R.Rehmans living a mediocre lifestyle instead of taking the road that's less taken! But education and the fear of it in this generation is a beautiful progression that's going to lead the next to take the leap in what they don't call as just survival. From there may be we can see our way out and talk about other plausible deficiencies, if any.
The final few seconds of the show is what I was gripped upon.
"In India, education is worshiped…. and parents will skip meals to send them to private schools…."
How true!
A few years ago, a group of us had a discussion on this same issue. So, my connectivity-speed to those lines of thoughts was obvious and immeasurably fast.
To reiterate, in India, it is true that the middle/lower class families, in a way, skip meals to provide a reasonably high quality education to their kids. It is true that the reverence to education and educators are injected into each and every kid's brain from infancy. It is true that education is worshipped!
I was brought up that way! I saw and lived a life where people were sent to schools that were beyond their quality of lifestyle. Most of the time, the monetary struggle to make this happen was transparent that the responsibility automatically seeps in. At that age, with that brought up, the best thing that the kid can do is to educate their way out! The kid without his/her knowledge realizes this at a very early age. A single digit class rank is the most important thing in the world for almost every responsible student in the class. If parents skip meals, students skip fun, sometimes. As I said earlier here, there are a whole bunch of students who did not do what they wanted to do just to fit in this 'educate your way out' lifestyle.
Is this good? Are we in the right direction?....are the obvious questions that pop up. One of the dangerous byproducts of education is sensibility. Well, with exceptions apart, it's simple! Education breeds sensibility and in turn results in responsibility and growth in the right direction. So, a better educated society will proceed in a progressive direction much faster than the one which is less educated!
Presently, the society that we live in is afraid of being left uneducated! The spirit of competitiveness is so strong that we are just doing what we are supposed to do without thinking about what we deserve! "Once you start thinking what you deserve you become soft - Greg Popovich". Do what you are supposed to do and do that in style, what you supposed to get will automatically fall in! I am not talking Karma theory here…! What I am trying to say is to stop cribbing and start living!
This argument may have a completely different perception if you take the reservation issues into consideration, which I don't want to delve in to. Nevertheless, we are going great guns on the first step! Educate yourself first to start fighting the next step…!
As I said earlier, lot of people did not have the luxury to do what they want to do to fit in and live a life devoid of mediocrity. We have loads of Sachin's and A.R.Rehmans living a mediocre lifestyle instead of taking the road that's less taken! But education and the fear of it in this generation is a beautiful progression that's going to lead the next to take the leap in what they don't call as just survival. From there may be we can see our way out and talk about other plausible deficiencies, if any.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Dance like none is watching you
"Teach me dancing?" He was in his late 40's, "I have never been a dancer in my life and for some reason it is tougher than getting a PhD. Would you help me sometime?", and did sound sincere.
Two mistakes, I thought. Phd is not tough and I don't dance.
"I just flex something based on the beats, if you call that dancing, you must be kidding", it was something that I know….What I do, cannot be termed as dancing.
"Yeah that's what I call as free style", he said. "Teach me that! Not the steps….Teach me how to loose your mind to the beats"
I still don't know if he was serious or sarcastic. Well, coming to think of it (I don't know if I was doing it the way he thought) but it's not easy to dance that way, especially when you are in a place where you get the feeling that there are a bunch of eyes looking at you. Particularly the mistakes!...Nevertheless, when you lose your mind to the beats and let your body react to it, the product could some times be termed as dancing, for atleast a few in your vicinity!
Dance like none is watching you, lose your mind to the spirit of music and care less on the world that's attempting to see what you have in your moves!
If you are a frequent visitor here, you must have guessed where am going with this.
Life!
The whole "dance like none is watching you" thing goes with our life as well. Recently, a close friend of mine said that her blogs, to an extent, were turning out to be readership based. She had to fight and throw those thoughts that popped up to say "What would so and so think if I write something like that". Well, of course she won those fights. But sometimes most of us lose those without even knowing that there is a fight to be fought. I mean in our lives.
We tend to change our ways of acting, reacting and living for trivial reasons. "What would the world think if I do something like this" is the question that we ask quite a few times every day. The world could be a single person or even a group of people. Sometimes these are the people that we know and most of the other times these are the people that we don't know. And as a matter of fact we quite often even answer them, without our knowledge, by merely reacting to those questions.
The world has too many things to think about and we are certainly not in its priority list. But for us, it's quite different. Sometimes we unfortunately set high priority to the world around us and forget to live our own life. We fail to realize that we are taking those decisions assuming it really matters to the world around. But as I said before, the world has too many things to think about and you are certainly not in its priority list.
To a certain extent, I can agree on improvising our acts for one person or for a bigger act, which has a proportional response to a group. Note that, I use the word improvising here and not changing. In the former case, we do it for Love/affection/concern. In the latter case, we do it for the people who would be directly affected because of our acts. In both cases, it's a privilege. So, the changes that we offer to make to our ways of acting, reacting and living are certainly a privilege that we should give to only the chosen few. If one starts to think of changing what he/she wants to do to every Tom, Ram and Som, we would be losing something that's termed as "individuality".
Is it easy? Certainly not! I have been trying this, but have succeeded only to a certain extent. So, yes, it is tough to follow, but if we do, we would enjoy even the regrets.
Trust me! We would be happier if we do what we want to do rather than thinking about other's thought process on our actions.
Well, someone already said this in a much better way "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" Can you guess who this is? Hint: Everyone knows Him.
Two mistakes, I thought. Phd is not tough and I don't dance.
"I just flex something based on the beats, if you call that dancing, you must be kidding", it was something that I know….What I do, cannot be termed as dancing.
"Yeah that's what I call as free style", he said. "Teach me that! Not the steps….Teach me how to loose your mind to the beats"
I still don't know if he was serious or sarcastic. Well, coming to think of it (I don't know if I was doing it the way he thought) but it's not easy to dance that way, especially when you are in a place where you get the feeling that there are a bunch of eyes looking at you. Particularly the mistakes!...Nevertheless, when you lose your mind to the beats and let your body react to it, the product could some times be termed as dancing, for atleast a few in your vicinity!
Dance like none is watching you, lose your mind to the spirit of music and care less on the world that's attempting to see what you have in your moves!
If you are a frequent visitor here, you must have guessed where am going with this.
Life!
The whole "dance like none is watching you" thing goes with our life as well. Recently, a close friend of mine said that her blogs, to an extent, were turning out to be readership based. She had to fight and throw those thoughts that popped up to say "What would so and so think if I write something like that". Well, of course she won those fights. But sometimes most of us lose those without even knowing that there is a fight to be fought. I mean in our lives.
We tend to change our ways of acting, reacting and living for trivial reasons. "What would the world think if I do something like this" is the question that we ask quite a few times every day. The world could be a single person or even a group of people. Sometimes these are the people that we know and most of the other times these are the people that we don't know. And as a matter of fact we quite often even answer them, without our knowledge, by merely reacting to those questions.
The world has too many things to think about and we are certainly not in its priority list. But for us, it's quite different. Sometimes we unfortunately set high priority to the world around us and forget to live our own life. We fail to realize that we are taking those decisions assuming it really matters to the world around. But as I said before, the world has too many things to think about and you are certainly not in its priority list.
To a certain extent, I can agree on improvising our acts for one person or for a bigger act, which has a proportional response to a group. Note that, I use the word improvising here and not changing. In the former case, we do it for Love/affection/concern. In the latter case, we do it for the people who would be directly affected because of our acts. In both cases, it's a privilege. So, the changes that we offer to make to our ways of acting, reacting and living are certainly a privilege that we should give to only the chosen few. If one starts to think of changing what he/she wants to do to every Tom, Ram and Som, we would be losing something that's termed as "individuality".
Is it easy? Certainly not! I have been trying this, but have succeeded only to a certain extent. So, yes, it is tough to follow, but if we do, we would enjoy even the regrets.
Trust me! We would be happier if we do what we want to do rather than thinking about other's thought process on our actions.
Well, someone already said this in a much better way "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" Can you guess who this is? Hint: Everyone knows Him.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Idealist Vs Pseudo realist
An excerpt from a conversation between an Idealist (I) and a Pseudo Realist (PR)….
Idealist Vs Pseudo Realist
Image source: modified.
Idealist Vs Pseudo Realist
Image source: modified.
I: Love is in the air
PR: Yeah I can smell it! Did u flush?
I: You are fooling yourself
PR: Well, am I? Enlighten me!
I: Love is everywhere. Love doesn't need language, culture, country etc. Without Love there is no human existence.
PR: Where did u pick these lines from? Each and every thing you just said goes well with Sex as well.
I: You can never live with your own self for the rest of your life. You definitely need some one to reflect yourself to, at the least.
PR: Yeah. Okay! Where does love come here?
I: You aren't enjoying the beauty of this world by being single.
PR: Well, singleness and sickness are two different things that people sometimes confuse themselves with.
I: Fall in love you will know the difference
PR: I will, if you tell me what love is?
I: Love is like god. Incomprehensible yet experiencable, Intangible yet achievable, unexplainable yet agreeable!
PR: Wait… wait… wait! You mean to say one can't understand it, but can just feel it.
I: Precisely.
PR: How typical? So you are advocating something that you don't understand?
I: Yes. That's the beauty of it.
PR: What's your name and where are you from?
I: Idealist and I' m from the inside of you.
PR: Just stay there.
I: Come on. At least wish people! You don't have to be in Love to wish people on the day they celebrate love.
PR: Thanks for pointing it out. I'm neither a fan of St.Valentine nor a lover of Roman or whatever traditions. So I will stay put. It's just another day.
I: Forget Love, celebrate people at least.
PR: Okay! If this is the only way to send you back in. May be for the people who believe in all these! I am sure they will have a great day! Because and only because they believe in it and I believe in them.
PR: Yeah I can smell it! Did u flush?
I: You are fooling yourself
PR: Well, am I? Enlighten me!
I: Love is everywhere. Love doesn't need language, culture, country etc. Without Love there is no human existence.
PR: Where did u pick these lines from? Each and every thing you just said goes well with Sex as well.
I: You can never live with your own self for the rest of your life. You definitely need some one to reflect yourself to, at the least.
PR: Yeah. Okay! Where does love come here?
I: You aren't enjoying the beauty of this world by being single.
PR: Well, singleness and sickness are two different things that people sometimes confuse themselves with.
I: Fall in love you will know the difference
PR: I will, if you tell me what love is?
I: Love is like god. Incomprehensible yet experiencable, Intangible yet achievable, unexplainable yet agreeable!
PR: Wait… wait… wait! You mean to say one can't understand it, but can just feel it.
I: Precisely.
PR: How typical? So you are advocating something that you don't understand?
I: Yes. That's the beauty of it.
PR: What's your name and where are you from?
I: Idealist and I' m from the inside of you.
PR: Just stay there.
I: Come on. At least wish people! You don't have to be in Love to wish people on the day they celebrate love.
PR: Thanks for pointing it out. I'm neither a fan of St.Valentine nor a lover of Roman or whatever traditions. So I will stay put. It's just another day.
I: Forget Love, celebrate people at least.
PR: Okay! If this is the only way to send you back in. May be for the people who believe in all these! I am sure they will have a great day! Because and only because they believe in it and I believe in them.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Decisions after school
"Students have unenviable task in hand as examination nears"
Couldn’t resist walking down the memory lane to revisit some of the most important decisions!
Regardless of the maturity level, or knowledge, the decision that you take-in at the end of your final year of schooling (or may be even by the tenth grade itself) sort of defines the rest of your life. Some of us have the guts to change the course of action completely even years after the so-called life-time decision was taken. Some of us just branch out and do what we like to do with just a few changes, sticking on to the same field of expertise with the fear of not losing the few years that you had spend in learning something. The rest of us like me, stick on to the thing that started to do, then.
1996- I was given the freedom to choose what I want to do……well, not literally!
“Barath, what you want to do is up to you. You have two options in Engineering now, Chemical or Computer sciences, which one is yours?”
I remember reading a similar kind of a conversation in one of those blogs talking about collegiate education. Whatsoever! This is reality. I was given the freedom to choose one of the two that they short listed from the gazillion ways of living…! Not that I was forced in to this completly without my knowledge....nevertheless my knowledge was less then.
To my parents, the world was so easy then. The options were very simple. All they wanted me to have is a professional degree! The professional degree at that time, for a typical middle-class family, starts with a MBBS degree and ends with an Engineering one with none between them. In my case, there was a little consideration on Architecture, based on my drawing skills. Nevertheless, I was too lazy to write a separate entrance examination and that displayed my motivation to find the Howard Roark in me!
Anyways, the options that they gave me, sure does sound like I was a born engineer or at least a brought-up one. In reality, I was a born slacker and a brought-up idealist. Like most of us, I was good in a lot of things. I am not sure if engineering was one of them, because I never knew what it was, then. So, I still can’t comprehend the reason behind their thought of me being an Engineer. Call me slow, but in 1996 my decision making capabilities were solely parental and peer pressured….well let me digress from the autobiography!
There are quite a few things that we wanted to do in life. For some of us, it keeps changing, as we progressively learn new things. We like adapting and deriving love to the new-found infatuations and misinterpret those as things that we want to do for the rest of our time. Say, your new found love to sport, dance, a music instrument, reading, reviewing, writing etc. We do the same thing to career as well. Sometimes, half the way we realize that we are in the field that’s not ours and we trace back and go to interest motivated areas. Sometimes we keep doing it more than once, like dating a whole bunch of people until you get to find the love of your life.
It would be idealistic a case if every one of us knows what we want to do for the rest of our life at the age of 17. Most of us are not exposed to the interest derived areas, but are to the purpose derived ones. Just because a parent wants to tell that their son or daughter is an engineer or a doc, doesn’t mean the offspring should be forced to do that. External force is there from the age 15, when they get to choose their group, a math and science with computers or the one with biology. (that sure does sound like an engineer, considering biology less of a science compared to phys and chem) Do we have more groups? Oh.. may be commerce. That’s it. Well, some of us are not even exposed to the options. What the heck happened to art, fashion design, film education et al? It’s certainly not because of the educational institutions but the institutional families that pressure them.
The pressures are sometimes not just from the peers, it could be of any type. Birth may be. How many hereditary doctors do we get to see everyday? Family of engineers! Or may be even actors/actresses now! People sometimes choose their profession, just because their parents were successful in that.
Well, stop for a moment! Let’s see from the parent's perception. Of course the parents are equally concerned on not forcing the kids to take a wrong decision. They are knowledgeable on their age and the exposure. So, when there is a time that the kid needs to take a decision and when they feel that the kid is not matured enough to decide. They take the step for you. Beautifully balanced and amazingly bullet proofed, because their decisions are sometimes based on the successful clan of the then-current era. If they hear success stories on Engineers and doctors only, they will obviously be forced to surrender to their derived urges. On the other hand if they hear only sorry stories of people in the areas that their kids assume to be interested in. They would never want to step in and gamble. After all, we are talking about a life and career here. Hence, most of the people who get to choose a career through parental pressures are in a group that is successfully living or at least thinking so. Doesn’t matter you love it or not because most of the time we quantify success by monetary outputs, rather than personal satisfaction.
There is a big difference between doing something you love to do and trying to love something that you get to do. I was lucky, or may be smart to understand and to have found my love in what I am working on. But lots of people aren’t like that. They would be, if they had taken the right decisions at the age when they were not educated to do. Well, as I said it’s too idealistic a case, you cannot make the right decisions when the knowledge is less. Well, if you let me go back and make those decisions again, may be I want to be counselor or a people-analyst instead of a chemical engineer. Nevertheless, if I get to this same position, where I am now via that parallel universe…may be in that universe, Iam writing a blog that’s saying otherwise.
At ~17 you can’t expect every one of us to be the knowledgeable about the future interests. I know a lot of people who started somewhere and ended somewhere else. The decisions that are made for them did not materialize and hence they moved on.
But if you think more, it’s just not about doing what you love to do or trying to love what you do, it’s about how do you define your love to it. You don’t love something, just because you are successful in it. A beggar is a typical example of that statement. You love something, because you enjoy doing it and because it makes you appreciate and reinvent yourself in all possible ways. Again, as I said earlier, success is not defined by the amount of money you get out of it. It is by the unquantifiable satisfaction you derive out of it.
Had Ramesh and Savitai Tendulkar forced Sachin to take up engineering or something else at his age of debut, do you think we would be watching Indian cricket with this unquantifiable passion? I don’t know about you, but I’m skeptical on the unquantifiable part.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Acclimatization
Apologies for not being able to share the air in the blogosphere for a while. Work has been keeping me busy off late. In any case, better late than never!
Acclimatization! (process of adapting oneself to a new temperature, altitude, climate, environment, or situation)
May be I shouldn't use this word here, as in more cases it just signifies the physical changes that one should get used to rather than the cultural differences. Nevertheless, I liked it, so here I go!
For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about the acclimatization issues that one had to go through in the process of finding peace and harmony, along with monetary pleasures, across borders. One of my friends is going thro' it as we speak. May be that prompted me to write this. Anyways, when I decided to go thro this acclimatization path, years ago, it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. May be I was exposed to the western culture through friends, books, movies etc., and hence no shocks awaited me. Ofcourse, there was a great deal of things that I didn't know. From where I was to where I am now, I should say it's been fun learning and understanding this style of living.
Certainly it would have been much tougher than what it was, if I was not exposed to a lot of things prior to coming here. However, if one has an open-mind and the willingness to learn, I guess anything would be easy.
As I said earlier, learning different cultures and lifestyles is always fun, but,
Do you have the time to learn it?
How important is that to your life?
Most of us want these questions to be answered before even attempting to learn.
From a common person's perspective (not an idealist), if one's chances of working with something is 0%, why waste time in learning it? This theory is sometimes extended to people and culture as well. That's the very reason why most of us don't know a lot about Somalian lifestyle except for the obvious fact that they starve. Who cares? As long am able to help them and do my bit in stopping the starvation am good. This thought certainly beautifies pragmatism, but blocks people comprehension. By this, I mean that some of us don't even attempt to understand some things, just because it appears to be of no direct use to your way of life. But if you think, you would agree that most of the life-lessons that one learn in their time would most probably be from an unexpected source.
Well, I am not suggesting that one should have to learn all kinds of cultures and lifestyles before death, regardless of their connection to it. What I am trying to say here is that one needs to have an open-mind in learning everything, including people/culture/lifestyle.
Confronting ignorance is the best way to start learning. Understand the fact that we don't know a lot about the place, which makes it easier to acclimatize.
People, cultures, lifestyles are like Time. There are no constraints in learning them and it's almost impossible to know it all completely. Unlike Love, Acclimatization gets easier with understanding. The best part about this is that you learn from what you see and understand, not just by assumptions and imaginations. Hence, I guess acclimatization is probably one of the best things that one had to go through in life, so why wait for it?
Acclimatization! (process of adapting oneself to a new temperature, altitude, climate, environment, or situation)
May be I shouldn't use this word here, as in more cases it just signifies the physical changes that one should get used to rather than the cultural differences. Nevertheless, I liked it, so here I go!
For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about the acclimatization issues that one had to go through in the process of finding peace and harmony, along with monetary pleasures, across borders. One of my friends is going thro' it as we speak. May be that prompted me to write this. Anyways, when I decided to go thro this acclimatization path, years ago, it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. May be I was exposed to the western culture through friends, books, movies etc., and hence no shocks awaited me. Ofcourse, there was a great deal of things that I didn't know. From where I was to where I am now, I should say it's been fun learning and understanding this style of living.
Certainly it would have been much tougher than what it was, if I was not exposed to a lot of things prior to coming here. However, if one has an open-mind and the willingness to learn, I guess anything would be easy.
As I said earlier, learning different cultures and lifestyles is always fun, but,
Do you have the time to learn it?
How important is that to your life?
Most of us want these questions to be answered before even attempting to learn.
From a common person's perspective (not an idealist), if one's chances of working with something is 0%, why waste time in learning it? This theory is sometimes extended to people and culture as well. That's the very reason why most of us don't know a lot about Somalian lifestyle except for the obvious fact that they starve. Who cares? As long am able to help them and do my bit in stopping the starvation am good. This thought certainly beautifies pragmatism, but blocks people comprehension. By this, I mean that some of us don't even attempt to understand some things, just because it appears to be of no direct use to your way of life. But if you think, you would agree that most of the life-lessons that one learn in their time would most probably be from an unexpected source.
Well, I am not suggesting that one should have to learn all kinds of cultures and lifestyles before death, regardless of their connection to it. What I am trying to say here is that one needs to have an open-mind in learning everything, including people/culture/lifestyle.
Confronting ignorance is the best way to start learning. Understand the fact that we don't know a lot about the place, which makes it easier to acclimatize.
People, cultures, lifestyles are like Time. There are no constraints in learning them and it's almost impossible to know it all completely. Unlike Love, Acclimatization gets easier with understanding. The best part about this is that you learn from what you see and understand, not just by assumptions and imaginations. Hence, I guess acclimatization is probably one of the best things that one had to go through in life, so why wait for it?
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