"Versus" 2

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Has there been a time in your life when you've just let go and been what you've always wanted to be?Felt what you've always wanted to feel?And not been afraid to do so? What I attempt to do here is to magnify the human heart and unearth a fragment of the human mind that's embedded in it...i just take one human emotion "Love".
I must admit that though I'm a psychologist by profession,I'm a believer in the medical truth that there's a reason why a person can be brain dead but his heart is what keeps him alive.There have been incidents where comatose patients have responded to a human touch ..they do so not only because their mind rationalises that they are still alive but because they feel that there's a connection and that they are needed.

They say the heart feels what the mind thinks.One throws out of balance what the other chooses to weigh carefully.One emotes while the other rationalizes.One escapes while the other realises.
I can only speak from experience that the heart is a follower in its own footsteps...what do I mean by this ?

The past year has been experiential for me.I started to take baby steps towards the self realisation that I must live for the day and love like I never have.And so the object of my affection reminded me that too much of a good thing isn't bad after all.So my heart spent extravagantly,not giving thought to the instincts of practicality.It just wanted and so it gave because there was a hollow that wanted to be filled with the love that it was receiving.There were moments when reality loomed large like a dark cloud to remind me that I needed my space and time.But my heart had decided.Period.What I got from this irrationality was a sense of completeness and oneness in spirit,body and mind.A unification that nothing in my life could achieve.

A parallel to this can be quoted from my life again.When I decided to change my job recently I had to consider the options of security versus insecurity and change versus comfort.Without going into the thread of the matter....there was the matter of the heart that had to be considered - a relationship.My mind told me to reason out and do what was best for me .But instead my heart challenged the rules of logic and chided me for choosing a job over a relationship that had taken a long time to build.The outcome of this "tangled weave" was that I followed my heart and in the bargain saved the relationship that was at stake and got the job too.The heart understood that it wasn't taken for granted and so it compromised.This brings me back to my rhetorical question at the beginning of this thought.The answer is : I let go and the puzzle fell into place.
Perhaps this is how it is in life.When we let things take their natural course,the heart and the mind conspire to reach a middle ground where we are nurtured and cared for.But then again this isn't a general theory of human kind...it has worked in my case and it is a rule that I intend to follow.
I can't really attempt to speak for or against either of these entities.For some the heart is bigger than the mind...for others vice versa....but in the timeless battle between them - both prevail.
Sir Walter Scott wrote :
" True Love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire
Whose wishes soon as granted fly
It liveth not in fierce desire
With dead desire it doth not die.
It is the secret sympathy
The silver link,the silken tie
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind."

"Versus"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Over the past few days I've been having what can only be called an ethical debate on various human values.
Scene I :Just the other day I was having this brief conversation with a good friend of mine on how the metre in an auto these days is just a measure of the distance the driver goes to cheat a passenger.One thing led to another and she was posing an ethical issue on what I would do if I were an auto driver who had to pay a whopping hospital bill for a close relative of mine....and out of sheer desperation I'm driven to blaming an inanimate metre which can't really speak in its defense either! My spontaneous argument was that I would resort to all sorts of measures and then if it boiled down to letting that person die...then it has to be done no matter what.But who was I kidding? And so I was forced to accede to the fact that ethics are situational.

Scene II : My workplace is inhabited by people with high moral stands.A pet issue that is often discussed about is : "Abortion ".As if it wasn't enough to try and convert an entire batch of students, here I was hearing about their exploits in the classroom....till I couldn't take it anymore.So my take on this issue covered 4 vital points.


First,its not just about playing god and deciding whether another person's life lies in your hands.It's about deciding on the quality of life that you are responsible for bringing into this world.So you can't justify developments such as prenatal diagnosis and screening as mere advancements in science..they serve a powerful purpose and they can be used to alleviate a lot of problems.


Second,if human life should just be allowed to take its own destiny...think about the loss in terms of time,energy,resources and not to mention immense heartache when one is faced with bearing a child with a serious genetic abnormality.Now I'm not suggesting that we clone perfect human beings and eliminate all the rest that do not fit up to the standards of perfection (we aren't making a Hollywood movie here) ...I'm merely saying that we do not have to learn about what is perfect by looking at what is imperfect and deformed....nor do we have to learn forbearance and tolerance by looking at another person's suffering.Yes,we need all kinds to make the world..but again I ask...at what expense?Sometimes we have to pit an intellectual decision about human life against an emotional decision about the same.

Third,if abortion is endorsed by a woman who has had irrepsonsible sex I would hardly say she is the right vehicle to justify abortion.However if it's not the fault of parents who haven't had the better sense to look up the dynamics of genetic inheritance and family trees (except perhaps for a marital alliance or tracing common links that connect them as a family) why should they be held responsible for a foetus that hardly has a mind of its own...let alone a fully developed physical body? As my good friend in Scene 1 says ...it is the complexity of the human mind that separates us from other living beings...and when that hasn't been formed yet....We can make choices that enable it to lead a better life outside the comforts of the womb.I would even go so far as to say...left to the unformed foetus,it would probably decide to abort itself when it isn't good enough (which is what happens in nature's case of the survival of the fittest !) So who is to blame for natural abortion ?I know it sounds far fetched....but its definitely something to think about...

Lastly....when we talk about abortion...are we talking about just the termination of a human life?(Just a note: Courtesy my colleague: We can hardly compare the complex issue of abortion to the malnourishment that exists in Ethiopia.Can we terminate those babies because we know that they would be born into a life of poverty and severe health risks and the pointless waste of millions of currency which have no long term solution to this issue? The point is had we provided the right nourishment to the growing foetus it would actually have a chance to lead a life that has some decent quality to it..which is not the case of those born with genetic defects.Sometimes these genetic defects aren't just physical,they are intellectual to the point that the person ultimately would not know if he or she is leading the life they should be,had they been unaffected.) Shouldn't we in fact be talking about the bigger picture of "the sanctity of life itself "? So when we have a boiled egg for breakfast...isn't that a life that was terminated before it has had a chance to be born.But now..at the risk of trivialising the issue...I have to end here.


Which brings me back to my original issue.The ethicality of values.My final take on this would be there cannot be a blanket statement that goes "Good is good and bad is bad"....life is about grey areas.Yes,there should be blanket laws about issues such as abortion,criminal activities etc,so that they aren't misused...but at the end of the day it all rests with the individual's situation and idiosyncracies.The question then is what do you do when it involves another human being...? If you say that killing a life is a crime even if it means preventing a lifetime of hardship and pain....I would say ....If you steal,even if it means it is to save a life ....it still qualifies as a crime.

The debate on ethics will go on.

A.n. I.n.c.o.m.p.l.e.t.e B.l.o.g. E.n.t.r.y

Saturday, August 2, 2008

3 am >>>>>>
Its been almost a year since my last blog entry.Its funny how things do not change even after so long....it was one of those nights or should I say early mornings when I couldn't sleep because of things weighing on my mind...tried my self-taught twisted psychotherapeutic strategies...counted unicorns...surfed a hundred channels....snacked some comfort food,but nothing worked.Then something magical (I maintain "magical" till this day ) like a flash upon my inward eye read BLOG and if I may add a distinct voice in my head said BLOG.A quick search for blogspot on the WWW and voila ! A blog was born for eternity!

I must warn you though that there may be a fair degree of editing that's required and some free association that you will lose track of somewhere between the first sentence and (if you are insane enough to reach )the second....!

So the lyrics buzzing in my head right now are the lyrics of a yet to be released Alanis Morrissette single : "Incomplete". It goes something like this...
"One day I’ll find relief I’ll be arrived and I’ll be a friend to my friends who know how to be friends
One day I’ll be at peace I’ll be enlightened and I’ll be married with children and maybe adopt
One day I will be healed I will gather my wounds forge the end of tragic comedy
I have been running so sweaty my whole life Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time Of being forever incomplete
One day, my mind will retreat, and I’ll know god and I’ll be constantly one with her night dusk and day
Ever unfolding Ever expanding Ever adventurous and torturous But never done.
One day, I will speak freely I’ll be less afraid And measured outside of my poems and lyrics and art
One day I will be faith-filledI’ll be trusting and spacious, authentic and grounded and whole
I have been running so sweaty my whole life Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture this whole time Of being forever incomplete. "

I wish I could take credit for these words....but as my friend said ..its almost like Alanis ( apologies for the first name familiarity) stole the words from a million people!So it made me think....we aren't as alone as we think we are.Its all about a common human ancestoral genepool...archetypes from an inherited past...a common human existential malady.No person can ever be complete and whole.How then do we reconcile ourselves to the throes of incompleteness?If I were the epitome of positivity..I would've said "Hope.Love.Faith." If I were a spiritualist..I would've said "A higher power knows what's best for us".But being the contradiction that I am...A realist and a daydreamer...this is a question that I can never find an answer to but one that I will still ask.
They say a song speaks for itself....and I rest my case for now.5 am>>>>>>

Some where down the road...

Friday, October 5, 2007

That Sheryl Crow song...''Everyday is a winding road.I get a little bit closer/Everyday is a faded sign/I get a little bit closer to feeling fine/.........I'm just wondering why I feel so all alone/Why I'm a stranger in my own life/Jump in, let's go/Lay back, enjoy the show/Everybody gets high, everybody gets low/These are the days when anything goes...."

Somewhere along that road I will meet someone who'll turn my life around and probably say goodbye.Somewhere I'll wish for just 5 more years of my youth.Somewhere I'd wish I was myself all along and not someone else.Somewhere I'd wish I was more optimistic about my life.
Somewhere I'd wanna be a cosmic related feature.Somewhere I wish I'd wake up and think all this was a just a weird dream.Let me put my life back on gear 1 and move it.

Are these everybody's innermost longings?Or am I all alone? The first...well,I'll just hitch a ride and enjoy it.Life's taking me where everyone else is heading. The second...I'll probably go the mile alone.Just being myself ..hopefully.

Wake up call...

Sunday, September 30, 2007

What am I doing blogging at this unearthly hour? Just my wandering mind giving me a wake up call...that I need to stop thinking about questions for which I have no answers. A Peanuts philosophy.

But I'll give it a shot.I do not understand myself.I have grown up in this unconditional environment with restrictions which were not difficult to abide by and the best opportunities to nurture my talents.Then why do I feel so lost,why is my sense of self so ill-defined?Where do I draw the boundaries between who I am really,who I want to be and what others want me to be.Ok,we can conveniently eliminate atleast one of those options. Now that leaves me with just some difficult questions to answer.Who do I want to be and what do people want me to be?Why do human beings almost always crave for the things they lack?Why is it that when they have 'everything' it's always the intangible,unreachable and the unattainable that they ache for so badly?Maybe it's like the proverbial apple in the Garden of Eden which could give them the ultimate edge over other living kind.

This blog is about me...so let me answer it for myself. The things I crave for are the things that would make my life more perfect.I can stop blaming myself and think that if I had just that 'one' thing it would make my life more perfect.My sense of self and my true personality can emerge only then.The thing that I crave for comes from a deep sense of insecurity that maybe I am not good enough.So I just keep filling up an empty space in my life with vaccuum,because it suits me fine not to be contented with myself....

Is this a wake up call for me?The awareness that I have right now can actually help me do something about the 'lacks' and 'dont haves' in my life.But then it's a choice I make.I will cling onto them because,then I don't have to blame myself for anything.I can always say ....''It looks like I have it all,but..."

When will I learn?The answer ..well,never....as long as I dont take the step to make a change in my perception and perspective.

So I will just be this person who went all the way to find out who she is on the back of a lorry which is running on a half tank of petrol.Somewhere along the way I got stranded and it just suited me fine to run around in circles getting help...when all I should have done is either fill the entire tank and then go search or stay put where I am right now.

But I am there halfway and stranded.There's still help along the way and I am not lost.But till that comes I will still continue searching....

Life is a collection of short animated frames...

Thursday, September 27, 2007

I am a strong believer in the significance of moments that last a lifetime...Fleeting moments gone in the prime of life.Snatches of passion that burn only when they are forbidden.Glimpses of truth that disappear when innocence fades away.Hard to imagine that when I lie in the deathbed of my youth,those defining moments had got lost in the whirl of time.I would wish longingly for that which was within my reach and that which I let go so carelessly.
So go ahead,capture life in little colourful pellets of memories ,preserve them for eternity.

The tie that binds...

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Someone once said...People are like Pillars in a Building.Some hold others up.Some let others lean on them.And there are some that are just there.
I believe in the oneness of humanity.Every person has the capacity to connect to another.We talk about compatibility in marrriage,connection in friendship, affection in family,loyalty in institutions.Sometimes things turn sour when the initial emotional bonding pales in comparison to the harsh reality of actually having to get along.But the fact that people form relationships means connecting is the DNA of life itself. The thing that sustains ,the thing that drives and the thing that builds.
What's new in that? Simply nothing. Connect.Lock your eyes with a stranger.With a lover.With your child.Whoever.It's a moment frozen in time.