Friday, February 25, 2005

Sleep(i)ness in Studyville!

No philosophies this time! I don’t want to reach a state where being normal is abnormal! So here we go, a deliberate attempt to portray normalcy!

Fridays! Generally, the day will be filled with research and deadline responsibilities! This time it was a little different. I did not have loads of work to do. Had a couple of hours of hard core thermodynamics before the scheduled Friday eve research meeting!! But the motivation was rolling on the floor and laughing at me in the form of a note! Budvisor’s non-thermodynamic communication! “I won’t be available today”!

Well, that explains it! Am here writing stuff that’s no way related to what I had been thinking!!

Sleeping in the class!

The other day, I was wondering about how gifted I was, with respect to the concept of sleeping. Never in my life I have struggled to find sleep! Let it be the most populated un-reserved compartments that I was rarely forced in to during my weekly trips from Madras to Chidambaram or a disturbed research thought process! Doesn’t matter! I have always found a way to sleep! That’s the same case with the disturbance as well! If my dad is correct, there was never a day since my 6th grade someone worked hard to wake me up!! I always think that I can take pride on the control I have over my sleep!

But it teases me! Especially when my crown succumbs to the gravitational force, simultaneously as someone, in their highest degree of passion trying to make me understand something that they desperately want to communicate!! Particularly in the classrooms! Right from my undergraduate days of thought amplification, seldom a day goes by without a wake up call from the crown-gravity reaction!! I have tried everything, pinching my arms, pulling my side burns, shaking my legs, taking notes, writing unrelated articles etc., nothing helped! Drinking coffee during those talks helped a little, but once the coffee is over, in the next few mins I will be sleeping with my unconscious nods through out the lecture! As a matter of fact, I have slept even on several one-on-one meetings/presentations! May be the second person’s thought communication was monotonously motivating!

Recently, I was talking to one of my academic acquaintance! He said that he could see me sleeping during his lectures! Ofcourse he can! It’s not difficult to notice if 33.33% of his class is sleeping! I was embarrassed in the first place, but quickly woke up and said “May be you have to make it interesting!” May be its true! Don't expect to list the events that I have not slept on! But there are always instances that motivated me to stay awake for more than even a couple days for that matter!

Is it the tone of the talker that puts me in to sleep? Is it the amount of interest that I have on the subject that puts me in to sleep? Is it the rice that’s taking it? I really don’t know. Except for those one-on-one meetings, I always had company! Right after the class or a presentation or any discussion for that matter, I will have someone in the room sleeping and giving me that final smile of achievement (!!). Well, my “blame it on yourself” philosophy suggests me to wake up and find a way to keep myself awake!! But the verdict is that one really can’t help falling asleep during some of those lullaby sessions that are being called as lectures and presentations! You never have to feel guilty about it!! Enjoy those motivators who are trying in vain to gain the best from their learning curve of “how not to put someone to sleep, by just talking”!

Monday, February 14, 2005

Instincts!

If a man is offered a fact, which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something, which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.

-Bertrand Russell

What a wonderful thought (except for the gender bias)! I have been living with my instincts from the day of realization! There aren't a whole lot of people whom I know believe that their instincts lead them to bad conclusions!! What are these based on! There is no knowledge behind instincts. It is a behavioral pattern that occurs naturally.

"Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out", says Michael Burke.

Instincts give you the pleasure of knowing yourself. Sometimes it might lead you to a point where you start to evaluate facts, based on your instinctual knowledge. Say for example, you meet a person for the first time, your instinct says something about this person, may be nice or may be something bad! Doesn’t matter! Down the lane if this person does something, subconsciously your mind records those actions and tries to place those on the instinctual folders in the brain!! So as we go on, we tend to evaluate them rather than just accepting them. Is it good? Ofcourse not! When you find the facts in accordance to the instincts, you feel good and will take the pride on your instincts! If it were not, sometimes even after those overwhelming evidences you wouldn’t accept it. Just because it defies the laws of your instincts!!

I have made several decisions based on just instincts, some worked out and some has not. For the ones, which did not work out, I drooled over it and made sure that I found the reason, which fits in my instinctual knowledge!! But, that’s not what one should do! We should not base our decisions on just the instincts! Facts play a major role, as long as we know how to handle facts and instincts as separate entities, we will definitely reach a path towards truth! It’s hard to stay away from your instincts, which has this enormous power of influence!! Since our lives always propagate on towards the path of ideality we are supposed to learn and educate!!! Thoughts influenced by instincts are acceptable in the ideal world, but not the decisions, which are completely instinct-based!! Succumb to those instinctual impulses that makes you think, but not to those, which makes you conclude!

Friday, February 11, 2005

Problems?...Is there one??

It was the year 2000, the final year of chemical engineering life education at the Annamalai’s of Chidambaram! We were at our farewell party! Mixed emotions allover...It was a different feeling to witness the people with character and strength were broken apart beautifully by the wonderful non-chemical bonding called relationship! But there were also some strained thoughts all over. One of the groups who desperately wanted to fill the place with fun and laughter, called each and everyone on stage to embarrass them for the last time by glorifying those stupid moments of their engineering life!! For those who were off stage enjoying those embarrassments (or whatever it is) it was fun, but for the one on stage, it was hard to control the temptation of spoiling the evening by walking out of it! It was not easy for any of us, to get thro that embarrassment and forget about it once we reach down stage! It’s just that the group did not handle it perfectly!

When we were almost going to end the evening, news reached us that one of our friend's mother opted to accept the soul invitation from another universe! She was no more!! The whole place was dumbfounded! There were a whole bunch of combinatorial responses to the news, but the outcome was just one!!

When we were walking back, planning on a trip to his place, paying a final visit to show our support! One of my friends said something that I can never forget,

"Do you see something now..Barath! None of them are concerned about what happened a few minutes ago. Now, all they have in their mind is the thought that wants to know how to make him feel better? From what I see from here, I don’t see anything called as a problem. A minute ago the embarrassment is the biggest problem for all of us, but now its nonexistent. All problems are like that, what appears to be big now is going to be simple tomorrow"

It was Vivek. Even now, I get to meet and talk to him quite often! We ofcourse share our concentric circles of importance! But I should say that never in his life he had followed those words. I didn’t know whether he meant anything at that point or was he impressing the girls who were walking beside!(pun intended) but the words made a whole lot sense to me!

Triviality! That’s the key word.... everything is trivial to someone or the other in this world! The deepest problem for someone is nothing for another! Not that the person cannot relate oneself to it. It’s just the way one treats it!! There is nothing called a problem in this whole world. Never look for solutions, because there isn't a problem at the first place!! Optimism rules!

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

The third eye!

Any issue in this world in general has two perspectives. The communicated thought and the perception of the communicator! But how often we reach for the third vision. "A complete stranger opinion" and how important it is??

How many times in your life have you spoken about your issues to a person who is not close to you but yet sensible enough to understand the crux of it. How many times have you heard someone telling stories that you feel are not entitled to listen, yet it makes you feel good that someone is asking for an opinion!! These kinds of instances pop-up now and then, but have we ever thought the importance of this! Or is it important at all?

Lets set aside our egos and everything else! One necessarily doesn’t have to take this 3rd eye as even a suggestion for that matter!! May be a different perception!! The one, which you have never even thought of visualizing! May be it will tell you how not to live...more than how to live (idealist's statement)? But certainly its a progressive thought isn’t it?

There are certain decisions in life which should be taken without a third eye. Sometimes I feel that, its the respect to give to that decision. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, we were discussing about an important issue. He was wondering how could I be so confident about the decision that I was in to? The answer that I was with was based on the very reason of me discussing it with him!! I draped my decision based on the fact that I was opening a third eye in that issue! So, according to me, certain decisions shouldn’t be based on a third eye! But in most of other issues the third eye helps!

After writing this blog (before changing few lines), someone popped up and said that her subconscious is what she considers as a 3rd eye. It opens rarely and most of the time gives her the answers! Well, thats a beautiful way of thinking! I have never thought the subconscious as the third eye, I was thinking its meshed with the perceptional thought, the second eye! However my third eye (an opinion) gave me this idea of seeing subconscious as a third eye!

So as I said, it could give you a thought dimension that you have never considered before. May be it will not help in deciding anything on the issue that's in stake, but can be used for another issue that could pop-up in the later part of any other thought evaluation! It also helps in bringing down your ego sometimes!! And the best part is, the third eye person wont be a stranger anymore!!

Whatever it is, according to me "The third eye blind" is'nt a good model to live with! :)