Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Burden of Thought


I was never argumentative. I systematically avoid getting into debates/ discussions with people who cannot imagine leaving with views different from those they brought to the table. Every time I speak my thoughts out, I put myself out there, exposed: to ridicule, to shock, to my being proven wrong. Why? So I can further my search for truth. The only perk is that, occasionally, I get to see someone begin to think about things for the first time in their life.

I'm not sure how people begin to think. Is it an intrinsic skill found in every human being that only needs to be employed or does thought need to be triggered by an external stimulus? In my opinion, 'thinking' is not the ability to eliminate irrationality and hypocrisy. It's the ability to recognize them. Once you recognize a fallacy, you either replace it with the truth if possible or carry on with awareness.

Growing up with parents who more or less were religious and who didn't foist their beliefs on me, I learnt the difference between tolerance and acceptance. I never really liked the term 'religious tolerance' -- it bugs you no end but you don't do anything about it so as to not attract trouble. Acceptance, on the other hand, need not be going as far as appreciating differences but being able to glibly say, "To each his own." 

It seems to me that if one thinks long enough about life, death, nature and god, the threads of unbiased reason should culminate in the simple truth that if Earth were to do it all over again, science would be unearthed by mankind exactly as it did the previous cycle; All the facts, laws and discoveries albeit by different people. Given the same conditions that engendered life on Earth, life would again start as infinitesimal protein chain structures. Would the Odyssey or The Da Vinci Code be written as they were? Would the same gods we have today visit humankind and be worshipped again? I'd say no to both.

There are two categories of people who do not think. To those who have never really thought, there's a chance that somewhere down the line, they may be influenced to question and seek answers. What of those who refuse to think? It would be foolish of me to deem the latter kind as dumb. For someone who has adapted a way of life and values as the absolute good, life is stable, predictable and he/ she may very well outlive me. It's a sound way to preserve life. It is what your genes want even if you don't know it.

I however must confess that before I feel pity for them, there is a very brief time period when i feel intense contempt. It's a blip in my response. I may be nearer to the truth than they are but I'm nowhere near knowing all that is true. That bothers me.


Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Denial and Tears.

Gathering from personal experiences and following up with weeding through the internet to find relevant information, I see how little men understand crying. If i don't understand something, I am sure to come up with a million possible explanations. It is how minds work. The sheer volume of possibilities sets the stage for confusion, judgement, minimization of the issue at hand and in later stages, denial.

I read men inherently feel the need to fix things. I have seen it to be true with those men I do know. They go to great lengths attempting to do so even when things do not need 'fixing' as much as there is a need for patience and purely existing, both in body and mind. 


It is a fact that women cry a lot more than men. I remember a conversation with my best friend where she said, "I have observed that i cry in loud sobs when i am angry or frustrated. I do not cry when I am sad."  I have found that to be true in my case too. Sometimes, I cry because I am being forced to feel rueful. I cry at the unfairness of it all but in all fairness, the world is not fair. So I move on.

One issue I dwell upon now is how people forget, very often, that reactions to a stimulus vary from one person to another. I might wince for having scraped in knee while someone might be able to walk away from a bullet wound. ( I do not know about the latter. I am speculating for the purpose of drawing a comparison.) This non-absolute axiom tends to take worse beating when the stimulus turns from being physical to emotional. I might want to cry because my shoe heel came apart. Do not judge the validity of the reaction using your index of emotional response. If you do not understand the other person's incentive to cry or not to cry, if you cannot digest it, then respect it. As a last resort, I might say, flee the scene.


There are worse things you can do:
# Minimizing the problem. Using contorted logic to say how the problem does not warrant crying because the current problem is a wild exaggeration of the tiny issue that engendered it; There by, making the person regret ever exposing themselves to you in his/ her vulnerable position.

# Complete Denial. When minimization does not work, the next step towards the annihilation of the person's integrity is to deny the existence of a problem. Of course, problems can be invented just so the person can cry because life was so good, crying needs to done over things that do not exist.  Any sensible woman i know, who has a shred of integrity, does not invent sad stories, unless it's for her livelihood. Contrary to popular belief, I look to be happy for as much and for as long as possible.

I want to believe the reason men do the things stated above is because of their futile attempts to fix things. When you go all out and try to fix something and it doesn't make anything better, you then re-asses the situation. May be there was nothing to fix in the first place. Denial. Amid someone's tears.