Long Time... No See...

Well..  Its indeed been a long time since I have written anything, I have been so busy doing nothing that I just didn't get time to write, let alone write, I didn't even get time to visit my Blog. Oh Yeah !! You got it right.. Doing Nothing kept  me so damn busy. You don't believe me !! , Go start doing nothing and you will see. You get into a routine of doing nothing, The thought process itself is so tiring that it drains you by the time the sun goes down, and post that its a never ending struggle between your Watching TV or Going to bed early, and usually, the going to bed early wins the battle.. especially if you are residing in Delhi, in the winter months.

Well.. A lot happened in these months the highlights being me getting my PS3 replaced, Moving out of the house and taking up an independent accommodation, a lot of cooking, a few of my friends getting married and blah blah blah.. and a lot of other cool and not so cool, relevant/Irrelevant things that made a significant impact on the day to day living of this insignificant character.

Independence is a good feeling.. Not always.. but most of the time, it brings along the freedom of doing things your way, setting up of the infrastructure the way you need/want it to be, eating/drinking/sleeping on your time and schedule. Though it brings with it the well known daemons like, loneliness  detachment, Increased smoking, getting freedom to watch too much porn (I am counting this as a negative).. etc etc etc.. In a nut shell, its good, even with all the daemons,

One should experience it, The Independence , if not permanently, definitely for some time. It teaches you the importance of your time, your actions, your loved ones and I would even say that it brings you closer to your loved ones. When I was staying with my folks, I don't even remember when was the last time I had  a good healthy conversation with them. All i used to do was, Get in the house, bolt into my room, and get busy with my gadgets. Get in, Eat, Sleep, Get out.. was my routine. Now, whenever I go home, Even if its for 2 - 4 hours, That time is completely spent in a conversation with my folks, we discuss anything and everything under the sun, and I dun have to worry about getting in my room and playing with my gadgets  That is our time, lovely time and even they are happy, and even closer to me. So, a little distance, may bring people closer to each other. Rest, it depends on the setting to setting, family to family, person to person, situation to situation........

Well.. Moving On.. .. In fact . That is all for now.. I will hopefully.. catch up with you soon .. hopefully.. and the title will not be.. Long Time... No See.. !! :-).. Next Time.. May be will tell you about my cooking endeavors.. :-D.. With Pictures !!  

“Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair”

The above line is from a song by “Zac Brown Band” and the song is called “Knee Deep”. 

You Tube Link: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJbG7256ZLY

And I am gonna quote the punch line from the song:-

“Wishing I was knee deep in the water somewhere

Got the blue sky breeze and it don't seem fair

Only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair...

Sunrise there's a fire in the sky

Never been so happy

Never felt so high

And I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise”

I kinda fell in love with the song the very first time I heard it. Its a kind of a country number and it really grows on you. It makes me think, it makes me go to that stage of my life where i try to put myself in his shoes and think, Am I capable enough to ever come to this stage where, I am sitting on a beach and the only worry I have in my life is that the tide is gonna reach my stage.

This is a place, I believe, every one of us should be going to, every once in a while and dream about. This should act as a motivation to all of us and should eventually become our goals. All the materialistic things are okay, they are fine... achieve them, get over with everything, however sometime, some day that rat race should stop and we should come to this stage where we do not have to reply to that urgent phone call, that very very important email that the client needs or finish some pending work.

Also, mentioning the “Self Actualization” concept proposed by Maslov’s needs theory. How long can we be motivated by some”thing”. We would eventually move on to something else, what after we have achieved everything that we deem important for our survival, how soon can we reach there and do we ever realize that we are there and there is nothing more that can motivate us? I try to answer these questions, and frankly I am no where close to that stage yet. But I wanna reach there, soon.. so that I can enjoy that worry free time.

Think about it. How cool it will be when you are sitting on a beach, and the only worry you have in the whole world is that the tide should not reach your chair. WOW !! Just thinking about this gives me Goosebumps.   This is MY motivation, my Goal, My Vision... And again.. A Food For Thought for you... :-)

The Importance of “I Like You”…

We get so busy in our “I Love You” s that we forget the importance “I Like You” in our lives. Have you ever thought about it, that how many times do we actually use Like instead of Love in our conversations. In My Opinion, Love is a over hyped, over used, over said word which sometimes does not really convey the real meaning that we want to put forward. We use it so many times that we start saying it just for the heck of it.

We say I love you to our partner, parents, cousins, friends and many others and we say it so casually that it misses the mark many of the times. Do we actually love them all? Do we actually mean it ? Are we thinking about the actual feeling that “I Love You” will convey when its said just like that.  Food for thought.

Now comes the real question, I Like You, How many times have we ever told our partner that We like something which they did, Our Dearest friend that we Like what he/she has just done for us. Or simply that we like spending time with someone. Or a simple.. "I Like You".. Try it, It feels good, and it has a very clear meaning.

I believe that “I Like You” is much more powerful than I love you.  You might love your parents, your partner, your cousins but think about it, do you really like them too.. and do you like them all, the same way you like that one person with whom you spend most of your time. I am not even going into the relationships or marriage. It’s just the matter of conveying your message clearly.

 Try using the phrase and see the difference it brings to your life, your relationships. Again, it’s a food for thought.

Happiness...What... How... When... Where!!

The Master Key

Is there a key to happiness? I keep on pondering and wondering on the thought. What is happiness? How do we achieve it? And more importantly if we achieve it how do we know we have achieved it?

In the next few paragraphs, I am just going to give you the food for your thoughts and nothing else. And may be raise more questions than actually provide answers and just give you my 2 cents on the topic.

Sleeping Doggies on a Cold Night

Let’s start with the key to happiness, personally for me; the key to my happiness is doing something which takes me away from the usual. Yupp... it’s that simple. I spend 10 - 12 hours at work doing the usual stuff, boring stuff, don’t really have a choice... Do I? So when I want to be happy, I do something different, something which I have not done before. A few weeks ago I tried Bowling, and I loved it, it was something that I never indulged into before and now that I think of it, those 2 hrs I spent in the bowling alley were actually amazing as it took my mind off whatever I was thinking. I was like a small kid who was just thrilled by that Strike and did a “High Five” after almost every good shot. For you, it might be as simple as taking a walk. My Funda... do something different and then see... Did it take your mind off off your usuals... did it provide you with something fresh to think about? Did u feel relaxed? We get so busy in our daily routines that we forget the unusuals. Try it. And see if you can come up with what your unusuals and tell me if you have your key to happiness.

 

Taking the question of "How Do I know When I am Happy" a little further. Many of us are so busy in the run-of-the-mill tasks that we don’t stop and see how that makes us feel. Have you ever thought that a simple task of walking barefoot on a beach or cracking a joke and make someone LOL makes you feel?? You might not have given it a thought at all, however the next time you do something like this. Stop and Think. I am sure you will get a different perspective. Think of the person next to you and he might get inspired by you to do the same.

Service With a Smile

Continuing on the "Stop-n-Think" strategy, I sincerely believe in it. Whenever you are doing something unusual, stop yourself after you complete the task and think. How does that make you feel, do you feel a little sense of satisfaction, a sense of self achievement, or it might just make you smile. Isn’t that happiness? And these things if done again and again, and multiplied by their sheer number of occurrences, will make you a happier person? Just look at the guy on the right. He is just giving bhuttas, on a cold winter day, and just look at his amazing smile, he looks happy from within. Again... Food for thought... and Open for discussion...

Happiness should be in oneself, it cannot be chased, or should I say, should not be chased. IMHO, Happiness is accepting your flaws and not worrying too much about what the other person thinks of you or your deeds. There are million or zillions things that can be said about happiness, what matters is, what makes you happy? What makes you click? What makes you bring that million dollar smile on your face which can simply brighten up your day as well as the day of people in your vicinity? Think about it...and then live it... and...Very Importantly.. Stay Happy!! :-)

Schrodinger's cat....An Experiment, An Analogy

I read about this yesterday and I found it very interesting. Lets start with what exactly it is. 


Erwin Schrödinger, A Physicist, in 1935 conducted a Quantum Physics experiment, here is what he did.


This is a Hypothetical experiment that he conducted. We place a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. There is, in the chamber, a very small amount of hydrocyanic acid, a radioactive substance. If even a single atom of the substance decays during the given test period, a relay mechanism will trip a hammer, which will, in turn, break the vial and kill the cat. Now comes the interesting part. The person sitting outside (The Observer) will never know, until he opens the box as to what is the fate of the cat. He would never know if the atom substance has decayed, and hence cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed.


Since we cannot know the fate of the cat, as per Quantum Law, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time and this is called the superposition of states. If only we open the steal chamber, and peep inside, we would know whether the atom decayed, the acid leaked, the hammer smashed and the cat died or not. Which would make it clear and then we would have a clear fate of the cat.

So in other words, the observation or the measurement itself will affect the outcome and the outcome itself, on its own will not exist, and there will be no single outcome until the observation is made.

Now this is all Physics and might sound a little boring, and you might be thinking.. WTF happened to him, and why did he start discussing Quantum Physics out of the blue. Well I heard about the analogy and I found it to be directly impacting our lives, here is my take on the cat experiment.

In our lives, when we start thinking about the hypothetical situations, and start dreaming and imagining them on multiple levels and usually in our minds begin our sentences with “What If” and then just leave the thought there in the open and move on to something else, at that stage, how will we even know the fate of that thought, of that “Non-Action” of ours if we do not go right ahead and jump right in. 

Let’s say, we love someone, and we talk to the other party involved and there is no decision in place as to whether the relationship should continue or not. How will the fate of that relationship ever be known if the relationship has never begun? It’s like the cat; it’s both dead and alive at that stage. You would never be able to determine the fate without opening the box. Similarly you would never be able to determine the fate of a relationship without jumping in it.

This is just one analogy from this experiment, I am sure you can find thousands other, Just wanted to share the thought and put it out there. Interesting right ? 

My Theory of Relativity !!

In a particular situation; dissatisfied, stationary or satisfied, the objective is not simply “The Goal”, however its the “Relative Goal “set by the competitive subject.

It’s always relative, Let me repeat, It’s always relative. Whatever we do, whatever we think, whatever we think we can do, is always relative. It’s relative to thyself, its relative to the past, it’s relative to the competition or it may be even relative to a dear friend’s performance.

Let’s see, I am going for a morning walk, a simple task, what do I do, I pick up my shoes, wear my tracks and get out of the house for a walk. Does it stop here, No! What I do is, I measure, ALWAYS, How much did I do yesterday or how much my neighbour is doing, how much that guy on TV said that a person of my age can/should do? What is it.. Relativity.  I could have simply done my bit and walked till I felt tired and stopped and gone home and slept, But No, I always measure. Keeda hai na !! Relativity ka Keeda !

Similarly, its appraisal time, all is done, everything completed, Letters are handed, and I get above market average and I am more than satisfied (Don’s get excited, Hypothetical situation:-P, Happy.. During Letter Distribution.. Ha.. U kidding me!!) and I move on, then a few weeks later, there comes the news that the guy who was with me, equally deserving, got 4 % more than what I got. Now.. The happy feeling is gone, I don’t look at any bloody reason i am just sad, all worked up and ready to go to the boss to fight (Again Hypothetical, you forgot ..HR’s Famous Non Disclosure Policy.. :-P). Why is that.. This is relativity; I was all fine till I got to compare my numbers with someone else.

Why is relativity becoming such an important part of our lives, Yes, the other name of relativity can be competition, however still, why do I have to compete, compete with anything in the similar domain. Why I can’t simply live my own life with its merits and demerits or whatever it has in store for me, Why do I have to say, I need a “Relatively” bigger car, as I very clearly know that that bigger car will also serve the same purpose as my current car?  Food for thought!!