Thoughts !

There are some disclaimers I would like to make before you go on to read this further:

1. This isn't an essay with any moral in the end.

2. This isn’t an article with a story to relate to.

3. These are just my thoughts with no start and no end, you are free to join them at any page you wish to and relate the thoughts from there.

4. I have never got around reading it the second time and editing it, so you can just try to ignore the grammar and the spelling mistakes for now. It will be worked upon once I am done writing everything down, just not focussing on that aspect as of it for now.

5. This isn’t a self-help book that will help you become a better human over the course of time. I don’t think it’s going to do any of that. All it might do, at max is, give you a new perspective of things, but again, it’s just not a self-help book. So invest your money and time accordingly.

6. Lastly, it definitely is not a book, of how I got/getting over my break up/divorce, it’s just not that, but it’s about the perspective that I saw in life out of the experiences that I had. They say, you really need experiences, to teach you things, but honestly you need the experiences, to learn a new perspective. Hence, this is all that it’s going to do for you. 

So considering that you have read it till here, and wish to read further, here it is, the thoughts, the way they are, the way they come. We somehow manage to miss these thoughts, I mean honestly aren’t these just born with us, the thoughts are literally the only thing we are born with but over time, we somehow managed to mess it all up, and completely miss out on this aspect of life. So I will hope to draw your attention to this part of life, with the writings below.

Well then the book is yours, happy reading.

 

COMFORT

So, where do I start, it’s as difficult for me as it is for you to think which page to open, where do I start from? Should I start from the beginning? Or give you context of things? Do I explain myself so you understand better? Or do I take you back in time, way back in time, where it all began?  

I think I will begin from the beginning, the very beginning, the beginning of mankind. 

So why were humans born? I mean, I am not asking the biology of it, or the purpose of it, or the theory of evolution (I am sure, you are all well aware of it). I am just asking why were they born? Like the entire incident, why did it happen? I think it was purely nature playing its part. The way all organisms were born, the way nature played it’s part in bringing together those things required, for life to happen. So similarly humans were born, with no real purpose of life, it was just what was supposed to happen, and so it happened. But somewhere along the way, we lost our way. I guess it started right at the beginning too, when just a  food eating animal (more intelligent in nature) decided to find more comfort in things, in way things are done. First they sharpened their weapons, instead of caves, learnt to build their houses, then the houses started getting better, the comfort started feeling nice and the human got greedy and then he got greedier and more until the point that we have reached now, where we desire every comfortable thing for ourselves and make them rather more comfortable. All of these need to stop at some point. We can’t keep running this race forever. All that we really need is a nice comfortable house, with rooms sufficient enough for all of us, enough income to earn your bread and butter and alcohol, and a little more for a holiday on and off. I guess that would be all, as far as it goes to establish some grounds about comfort.

But then comfort wasn’t all too, was it? We reached a point in time where we were absolutely comfortable too, but were we satisfied? Were we content? We had earned enough to get the comfort of another world too (had there existed one). Yet, we weren’t content. We kept trying to get better, to reach somewhere, to earn some more. Soon enough, it became a competition, a race? A game? Trying to make a bigger score, trying to reach a higher number? Even the richest human, keeps working beyond acceptable timings, trying to stay where he is. The second richest, working even harder, trying to beat the First. An athlete working day in day out, year after year, ever since he can remember, for few moments of glory. Which the world is going to forget within months, days. What are all these aspirations for? What do we achieve in the end? Satisfaction. I guess, we would achieve that way earlier in life too, only if we changed our requirements from life. If you are good at something, do it by all means. But, not at the cost of suffering of others, at cost of missing out on other aspects of life. It’s life, you have to live it. Don’t miss out on living it. It’s all you have. What life was it, if it wasn’t lived.

 

RELATIONS

Now that we are comfortable, lets talk about the meat of the talk, so I was earlier talking about purpose, so technically there was no purpose. But we found a purpose, and the purpose was get comfortable. So since we have taken that out of the equation what remains is RELATIONS.

Well then, how did relations happen? They happened because we made them. Why made them? Well, my best guess would be, the ones born together, lived together right until they died, because who would make the effort of going finding out the other person and then living with them, it was just rather convenient to live with the ones you are rather better born with, and hence you did, and you named them BROTHERS , and SISTERS, but soon you added guilt to it, because you had named it brothers and sisters, and hence felt the need to go seek another partner with whom you can reproduce (because of course that’s the course of nature right). Well then, soon you named it WIFE. And then you started having these little rituals, for the entire incident, then the incident got better, because comfort had gotten better, remember? Then, soon after, you involved the government into it, and it became legal and non-legal. And amidst all this, the entire purpose of it was lost i.e. to reproduce.

So then we screwed up this, pretty badly too, and then started seeking the purpose of life, which is not there. There is no purpose, if there was one, we would have known it by now, but clearly we didn’t. I would like your thoughts about it, about the whole concept of relationships, and marriage and wife, and parents and the whole lot of it. Do you think, we were designed to be this way? I guess not, I guess we were just organisms created to reproduce and experience life. But again, as I said, somewhere down the line, we lost track of it, at nd got too attached to relations. Do other animals of the animal kingdom think of it this way? Do they stick around their biological parents for life? Do to pups from the same litter stay together until one of them dies? I guess not, once they are old enough to hunt, they all move out on their own.

Ok let me put it this way, think of life as a journey, everyone are passengers, travelling to some destination. A co-passenger by virtue of coming across us, ends up building a certain relationship with us, when time comes, that passenger alights the train. Does his leaving the train, disappoint us? Do we cry over losing a passenger we had so strongly bonded with? We merely feel content of having traveled with someone that part of our journey, and we carry on, looking forward to new passengers, new relationships. That’s what life and all it’s relationships are, and that’s how we should all take it. 

The world today has become heavily dependent on relationships, and we see our lives revolving around them, but honestly it should be the other way around. Our life and the way we live, is the centre piece of it, and everything else is just a satellite that may or may not revolve forever. The centre piece of it should not get affected by absence or presence of these bodies. Well now, it’s your life and what you make of it. Either you can make it the Sun, or make it Callisto, revolving around Jupiter, which in turn is revolving around the Sun. The choice is yours.  

 

CAREER

Well then now that we have relations taken care of, let’s talk of purpose, which is again, no purpose, but again, we have managed to forget about ourselves, and completely ignored what your own self needed. Well, it needed to live. You forgot to live.

Let me try bringing you back to basics. So, where do the basics begin. Again they begin right at the beginning, but again we are both too tired to fetch it from all the way back, so let’s just rather just pick it up from here, as it is. Well, we were born, we went to school, we learnt our way through the education system and tried making a career out of things, and worked our way hard through the career, for what? I mean literally what it is that we needed to achieve? Have we got there yet? Are we going to get there anytime soon? Are we just going to do this as long as we are too old to continue doing it? Or, are we just going to die, disintegrate, vanish while we aren’t even done doing it yet? Where did it all start? Again, because of comfort and our desire to seek it in ways we didn’t understand. We ended up here, running the rat race, let’s consider for a moment if it is an actual race that we are running, but eventually it does need to stop, doesn’t it? What good is a race if it doesn't end and we don't have any winners and losers. Some participants might not even be interested to win, and are just running for the experience of it, but overall if it’s a race, then it needs to end sometime. Now with that logic, it would be justified to say, it’s not a race, because had it been one, we would have known it all along. But our needs and desire to keep getting better at what we are doing, how we are living, what we are eating, has made this all into a race. Do you now see the logic in it? And how things ended up being the way they are? 

Well then, if it’s not a race then what it is? It has got to be something. The only thing that I can think of is this, if we go back to the starting of it all; the humans found an easier way to live, by distributing different roles to different people, this was basically just distribution of work. Over time, generations after generations, people kept getting better at what they were doing and that became their area of expertise, and something they ended up calling profession. Initially the payout of having a profession was exchange, of commodities. Later on came the currency and everything changed. Slowly the profession started taking the shape that it exists in today’s form: competitive, fast-paced, ambitious. 

Over time, all of these things; getting educated, having a career and growing in it, became an algorithm of the world. But does this one algorithm fits correctly for all? Well clearly it doesn’t, because if it did, Gautam Buddha, Mahavir, Ashoka, and many others and so many even today wouldn’t give up their career, their lucrative life style and step into the unknown, seeking something they know nothing about. That is primarily because one size doesn’t fit all. One algorithm isn’t what suits everyone. Everyone in the world has to follow his/her own destiny. The world is constantly talking to us, telling us what we need to do, only if we listen. So the question arises, Is it not necessary to have a career? The answer to this depends on you and your requirements from life. The world today has reached such an order, where everyone living, is expected to have a career, lest his survival becomes difficult. 

So what do you need to survive? 

Money. 

How do you get the money? 

Career. 

Is it mandatory to have a career? 

No. 

How do you make money then? 

Do something that you would enjoy over a period of time, and at the same time not lose sight of other things of life. 

A career/profession is something we can’t do without, so if we can’t avoid it, let’s enjoy it. Give 6-8 hrs of your every day, to something, called a profession. But don’t let your profession drive your life. Your life and your choices in life should drive your profession and your professional aspirations. If becoming the best in your profession is where your happiness lies, so be it. Give it all it takes in order to reach the place where you want to be, but be aware of the other aspects of life that you would lose out on. So that you at least know the cost you are paying for it. 

Too much has been spoken on this now. But since this isn’t going to be a self-help book, or a book with morals and lessons, I don’t want to say any further. But give it a thought. Take a moment, think about the choices you made in your life. Could you have done them differently and still been happier, simpler? Think before you move on to the next chapter.

Stay tuned...more to come.