what are we doing here?

some kind of caffeine fueled existential crisis might or might not have led me to this website and this quote below:

Leading neuroscientist Susan Greenfield believes humans are intrinsically individual.
Chimps can use rudimentary tools, eat, sleep and copulate - but they don't wear jewellery or any other kind of adornments. Why? Because humans can see a metaphor - view things in terms of something else - while animals cannot.That leads to the creation of status symbols like crowns and jewels, which are not in an animal's nature.

(emphasis my own) 

we enjoy metaphor, hence our fascination with stories and poems but i wasn't exactly thinking about metaphor; i was wondering about absurdity in our lives. the merriam-webster dictionary defines absurd as 

"1: ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous absurd

argument>"

it defines incongrous as:

: lacking congruity: as

a : not harmonious : incompatible <incongruous colors>

b : not conforming : disagreeing incongruous

with principle>

c : inconsistent within itself incongruous story>

d : lacking propriety : unsuitable <incongruous manners>

(emphasis, again, my own)  

 

hence i was thinking about the inconsistency within our lives - and i was wondering which of the other words would be more suitable: disharmony (a) or unsuitability (d)? whether the two of those words explain the extremes of our human behaviour? if the first explains cruelty and selfishness; and the second explains everything funny? 

 

hence, our human experience is basically characterised by not only our ability to see metaphor, ie, view things in terms of something else; but also do that with inconsistency within itself... and suddenly the human experience seems a whole less desirable than it did before. but none of the words above explain kindness - the most uniform of all our experiences and i think there might be some more words i might need to dig for, and something still worth being a human for.   

guess what, i really am fine.

I had a bit of an irritating moment today when someone told me I thought I was fine, but I really couldn't be. It has happened before, when I was told I would be angry with my Mum, but I shouldn't be.

Now, in a similar way to how I tested myself for depression, let me check if i really am fine. Unfortunately, there is no website called www.amifine.com, but here are a few questions i tend to ask myself:
a. can I celebrate when people around me are happy?
b. do i compare myself to them?
c. am i screaming or getting upset with people around me?
d. am i angry with people around me?
e. am i having any trouble trusting people around me?
f. do i find myself crying or getting upset at random times?
g. am i contributing to the happiness of people around me?
h. do people have to bite their tongue when they speak to me?
i. am i able to appreciate the generosity of  my family and friends?
h. do i remember to say thank you?
j. do i think i am perfect?
k. am i aware of the mistakes i tend to repeat often? ie, i am unable to achieve the desired goal?
l. do i have a plan to change?
m. what happens when i change the word people to Mum in questions a thru h?

i won't go into the details of it (tho, i probably should) but i really am fine, and i love my mum. i am aware of a lot of mistakes i make: i don't cook well, i should have a cleaner room, i should be at work earlier, where i can definitely focus better, i should perhaps try and arrive sooner at venues and i struggle a bit with coming back to an empty house while my friend is away - but i really am not bitter or angry. i am not even postponing happiness, when i get agitated, i know how to deal with myself.

i don't know how to explain this, and i wish i could because honestly I would be invincible if I could only keep this up. but seriously, paraphrasing Ramkrishna Paramhansa, deal with the Life as a whole and you realise that it makes up for the shit, if you only give it a chance, if you are game enough to keep playing.

PS: and yes, i tend to write stupid posts when i return to an empty house and don't have anyone to speak to!! 
PPS: both these people referred to in the first paragraph actually don't see me everyday...
 

it being saturday...

saturday is such an in-between time, a time of letting go to be able to gather yourself up... of tv in the background and yawns in the afternoon, of warm sun and books lying around... of dinners to catch up over, and conversations that will be made... a time of random thoughts and great insights, all for the blog...

- wish-a-truck-would-hit-me-so-i-could-finally-get-some-rest is a legitimate experience, it happens to more people than me! also, giving a name to something is strangely satisfying, even tho it might remain just as mysterious. maybe it is called sharing an experience. which is why i love to blog. 


- cream and winters get along really well! cream and pepper and winters are a match made in heaven!

-  you can't have your cake and eat it too - no matter what they say. choose, that we always have a choice is our spiderman moment - with great power comes great responsibility!

Loquacity Garrulousness and an excuse to write these words up!

Please indulge me, hypothetical reader, because I am tending towards loquacity* or garrulousness, whichever way you might have it.  (My housemate is away and I simply LONG for a simple conversation that one can have while making themselves a dinner, or while watching a TV show, or when one reads something completely insane in the newspaper and rushes to the living room because this absurdity simply needs to be shared! I don't know when I turned into this and I don't know if I can manage without intelligent adult company for long times anymore... I am not entirely sure when my experiments with solitary confinement reached a conclusive end, but i doubt if it can tempt me much more...) The trouble with being alone isnt anxiety as much as a lack of checks and balances - something that Newton's law of inertia puts so succinctly: When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either is at rest or moves at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force. But this isn't new, I am just repeating it because I am experiencing it again, we have spoken before about, it is not what you think but how you think that matters.

 

*a word I picked from here. isnt it lovely?

It has been that kind of a time, when,

you write a mail and dont get a reply;
you turn up at work and feel tired all day;
you open a file and the right software isnt available;
you repeat the same experiment and get different results;
you try your best and it is SIMPLY not good enough;
you try to try your best and don't manage it;
you place a glass on the table and it falls into thin air.

if at this point i could walk away from myself, i would! (and doesn't this blog go thru some cyclical phases) growing up, in my family, i used to dream of a time when somebody would let me make my own mistakes, to do some growing up thru direct experience - imagine that!

Is there a catalyst missing or are the ingredients all wrong? Off with her head, where is Alice in Wonderland and the rest of them when you need them?

perplexed

I don't do drunk very well - but I nail dehydrated - however, stories of people getting drunk sound fairly amusing. One of my friends had invited a colleague and his wife to their place for dinner, who then stayed on to consume copious amounts of wine. In this state of inebriation, I later heard, they would walk back to place their wine class on the kitchen counter and spectacularly drop it into thin air. This continued till my friends finally ran out of wine glasses - for which, I suspect, they were in fact grateful.  

Anyway, so while I do not do spectacularly drunk, I do understand the perplexity that one might feel when they place a glass on a table only to see it drop into thin air and crash into smithereens! It happens everyday when I walk into my house and find it in a state of complete chaos - some sensitive dependence on initial conditions going on there, for sure! And when I wake up each morning and realise I am exhausted and there is nothing in the world that can get me out of my soft and warm bed - at least not for another hour. This leads me to insane amount of cause-hunting; I call it insane because anyone can tell you that if the house is dirty, it is because you have not cleaned it - and if you are feeling exhausted in the morning, try and recollect what time you went to sleep! But that is not the way I look at it, I look at it from the same point of opinion as people who overspend by keeping in focus not what they earn but what they deserve. Hence, I wonder if life would be worth living if I wasn't able to play sports, meet friends, work, or do discussion groups? The answer is usually no, and I find myself wandering into the house happy and exhausted, long past the time I could do any house work or even sleep at a reasonable hour - simply perplexed that if the state of my mind and the state of my room are related how can my room be such a mess when I am feeling rather quite alright!