It's Friday already. It's already Jan 20th 2006! I wonder what all will happen in another 10 years in my life. Will it be stationary? Or will it move on significantly? One of my uncles is very ambitious - he always takes the risks the conservatives don't take - he switches jobs at the age of 40, 50 and so forth. He has been very successful in his career. He has had a steady growth.
I read this article on how to do what you love. It is a great article, by Paul Graham. He correctly explores and analyzes the events that happen in childhood and how they are responsible for our skewed perceptions. He is absolutely right. In fact, everything a man or woman does can be described by her childhood experiences. The childhood, in my definition, ranges from birth till the point where you don't depend on your parents, emotionally or financially. I might have written earlier that we don't have the power to choose the conditions of our birth - we can't choose our parents, nor the family in which we are born or the country in which we are born either. And scientifically, there is evidence that states that your brain pretty much gets moulded by the time you are five or six years old. Until then, it has this immense capacity. Based on the environment where you grow in, certain neurotic connections get strenghtened over time and just stay as they are till you die. The ones that are not given proper stimulus by exposing them to the appropriate stuff, wane off and die. That part of the brain capacity has just gone a waste. For instance, if a child is never subjected to music in its formative years, chances are that, the particular part of the brain which can relate to emotions stirred by music will remain unused. So, the overall brain capacity available to the child is also less. It may never think musically or it may never develop the musical abilities that seasoned musicians have. How hard is it to expose a child to music? Not that hard. Ok apart from music, what all can you expose the child to? If the parents are interested in dancing, chances are that they would send their kids to dance classes. What about businessmen - what do they do with their kids, assuming that they have the time to do all that?
A child absorbs the essence of the environment it grows up in. For a person, home is where he has grown up. Only that can stir the absolute nostalgic memories. When your brain had no information in it, when it is ready to take on information, it tends to remember the first bits of info. I wonder how a person can live totally peacefully in a country that's different from where he was born. I guess life these days is so busy that people don't have the time to contemplate such things. Their life gets consumed by the daily urgent activities they have to do.
Speaking of which, there are several things that we do everyday that are deemed unimportant. A phone call, for instance. We always attend phone calls regardless of what we are doing at the moment. So, it only means that the phone call takes precedence over anything that you are doing. There are exceptional people of course, who don't attend the phone call immediately. Still, they may take a note of who is calling and do call them back. But there are still more exceptional people who don't even do that. They just don't care. They are rather convinced that you are of no use and not worth calling back! These days, I find people not returning phone calls or replying back to emails. I am pretty sure they have the time to do it. In fact, they may be reading that email multiple times and wondering what to write. Can't explain why people's behavior changes all of a sudden.
Coming back to the point, we do things that are totally unimportant. We have to be conscious of these things. Think about your life everyday - there is always a pressing need to do something immediately. We can never escape this. Be it grocery shopping or taking care of a sick child or taking care of your health or paying the bills or working on the deadline oriented project - we all have these urgent issues. How many of them are actually important for your life? How do you gain control over these things and finally say - "Ok, we need to do these things, but I am not spending more than 1 hour on a total, I am going to devote the rest of my 'free' time towards defining my goals in life". It is very hard. Your life can easily - I mean very easily get consumed by your daily affairs. When you turn back and look, you may already be 60. You may suddenly have a lot of time then, but will simply not have the resources to follow your dreams. So in essence, if a person says that he will make tons of money and then focus on his dreams - you know that he is just plain wrong - his approach is wrong. There is no end to making money. It is a necessary evil. Again, speaking of money, it seems so fundamentally important and something that we should all crave for. I really wonder if people stop a second and think whether they can lead a peaceful and comfortable life with the money that they have. I don't think they do. They just plainly believe that they need to accumulate wealth and often kill the things they love the most in the process.
It's Devil's temptation. Don't get me wrong - money is of course important. It is one language which every one in the world understands in the exact same way. At least to live in the society harmoniously, we need money and we need to be working for it. But I am beginning to think that I should take a step back and find out my purpose in life. May be I have enough money, but I have to acknowledge that the society expects more from me - the society expects more mediocrity from me. I have to be very courageous and break away from this if I need a more satisfied life. I should choose not to be ordinary and mediocre and convince the society that I can be helpful to them only if I am at peace with myself first.
A swamiji once said that people do everything for themselves only. They don't do anything for others. Though this sounds very arrogant and selfish, it is actually true. A person who does charity for instance - will appear like a philanthropist to the society. That is absolutely wonderful. But, thinking a little bit more, he/she is doing it so that they may feel at peace with themselves. May be it will cause them so much unrest in their lives to find an orphaned child or sick people without help. Doing charity work may be the only way they find peace with themselves. I read a book about prayers - the book says that even if somebody prays for others, he/she is indirectly praying for himself/herself. It is like they would feel happy for themselves if their friends/family succeed in something. You can never make another person 100% happy by just telling them your success stories, howmuchever they care about you. This includes parents, spouses, siblings and friends. This may come has a bitter truth, but it is what it is - the truth!
I read this article on how to do what you love. It is a great article, by Paul Graham. He correctly explores and analyzes the events that happen in childhood and how they are responsible for our skewed perceptions. He is absolutely right. In fact, everything a man or woman does can be described by her childhood experiences. The childhood, in my definition, ranges from birth till the point where you don't depend on your parents, emotionally or financially. I might have written earlier that we don't have the power to choose the conditions of our birth - we can't choose our parents, nor the family in which we are born or the country in which we are born either. And scientifically, there is evidence that states that your brain pretty much gets moulded by the time you are five or six years old. Until then, it has this immense capacity. Based on the environment where you grow in, certain neurotic connections get strenghtened over time and just stay as they are till you die. The ones that are not given proper stimulus by exposing them to the appropriate stuff, wane off and die. That part of the brain capacity has just gone a waste. For instance, if a child is never subjected to music in its formative years, chances are that, the particular part of the brain which can relate to emotions stirred by music will remain unused. So, the overall brain capacity available to the child is also less. It may never think musically or it may never develop the musical abilities that seasoned musicians have. How hard is it to expose a child to music? Not that hard. Ok apart from music, what all can you expose the child to? If the parents are interested in dancing, chances are that they would send their kids to dance classes. What about businessmen - what do they do with their kids, assuming that they have the time to do all that?
A child absorbs the essence of the environment it grows up in. For a person, home is where he has grown up. Only that can stir the absolute nostalgic memories. When your brain had no information in it, when it is ready to take on information, it tends to remember the first bits of info. I wonder how a person can live totally peacefully in a country that's different from where he was born. I guess life these days is so busy that people don't have the time to contemplate such things. Their life gets consumed by the daily urgent activities they have to do.
Speaking of which, there are several things that we do everyday that are deemed unimportant. A phone call, for instance. We always attend phone calls regardless of what we are doing at the moment. So, it only means that the phone call takes precedence over anything that you are doing. There are exceptional people of course, who don't attend the phone call immediately. Still, they may take a note of who is calling and do call them back. But there are still more exceptional people who don't even do that. They just don't care. They are rather convinced that you are of no use and not worth calling back! These days, I find people not returning phone calls or replying back to emails. I am pretty sure they have the time to do it. In fact, they may be reading that email multiple times and wondering what to write. Can't explain why people's behavior changes all of a sudden.
Coming back to the point, we do things that are totally unimportant. We have to be conscious of these things. Think about your life everyday - there is always a pressing need to do something immediately. We can never escape this. Be it grocery shopping or taking care of a sick child or taking care of your health or paying the bills or working on the deadline oriented project - we all have these urgent issues. How many of them are actually important for your life? How do you gain control over these things and finally say - "Ok, we need to do these things, but I am not spending more than 1 hour on a total, I am going to devote the rest of my 'free' time towards defining my goals in life". It is very hard. Your life can easily - I mean very easily get consumed by your daily affairs. When you turn back and look, you may already be 60. You may suddenly have a lot of time then, but will simply not have the resources to follow your dreams. So in essence, if a person says that he will make tons of money and then focus on his dreams - you know that he is just plain wrong - his approach is wrong. There is no end to making money. It is a necessary evil. Again, speaking of money, it seems so fundamentally important and something that we should all crave for. I really wonder if people stop a second and think whether they can lead a peaceful and comfortable life with the money that they have. I don't think they do. They just plainly believe that they need to accumulate wealth and often kill the things they love the most in the process.
It's Devil's temptation. Don't get me wrong - money is of course important. It is one language which every one in the world understands in the exact same way. At least to live in the society harmoniously, we need money and we need to be working for it. But I am beginning to think that I should take a step back and find out my purpose in life. May be I have enough money, but I have to acknowledge that the society expects more from me - the society expects more mediocrity from me. I have to be very courageous and break away from this if I need a more satisfied life. I should choose not to be ordinary and mediocre and convince the society that I can be helpful to them only if I am at peace with myself first.
A swamiji once said that people do everything for themselves only. They don't do anything for others. Though this sounds very arrogant and selfish, it is actually true. A person who does charity for instance - will appear like a philanthropist to the society. That is absolutely wonderful. But, thinking a little bit more, he/she is doing it so that they may feel at peace with themselves. May be it will cause them so much unrest in their lives to find an orphaned child or sick people without help. Doing charity work may be the only way they find peace with themselves. I read a book about prayers - the book says that even if somebody prays for others, he/she is indirectly praying for himself/herself. It is like they would feel happy for themselves if their friends/family succeed in something. You can never make another person 100% happy by just telling them your success stories, howmuchever they care about you. This includes parents, spouses, siblings and friends. This may come has a bitter truth, but it is what it is - the truth!
No comments:
Post a Comment