Sleep is beautiful

..because you don't have to deal with people and conflicts and expectations and disappointments when you are asleep. There's no hurt, no stress, no discomfort and no anger. It's one of the most peaceful ways to be with yourself.

A temporary mini-death, sleep is paradoxically the easiest way to add life to your years. The entire process - putting your body in a dormant state, organs and tissues repairing themselves, our mind reliving through fantastic dreams our immediate and distant past and doing this every few hours routinely - is like a miracle.    For me, the way our brain filters out most of the surrounding noise to let itself sleep is amazing. How incredible that we can turn off listening (or at least not be bothered by what we hear) even though our ears are open.

Those who cannot sleep peacefully are truly unfortunate.

Your source of happiness need not be someone else

By finding your primary happiness in the things you do and find enjoyable, you liberate others and yourself. When you want others to take care of your happiness, they have to behave in a way that fulfills your expectations. And the same happens to you when others have this expectation of you. Nothing wrong in that and some constraints brought on by external expectations do improve the quality of life. The trick is not to let it get to the point of being over-bearing.

If instead you find your own source of happiness, whatever the other person does or you do for them is a bonus to whatever they had earlier.

There's of course joy in doing things for the people you love, it will make you and them happy. But this shouldn't be the main source of your happiness. Let it be the icing, not the cake.

The Value of Religion

Institutional religion is declining, at least in America. More and more people identify themselves as unaffiliated to any religion or describe their religion as "nothing in particular."

Could this be a movement towards enlightenment? People are becoming more aware that religion can be a choice, not just something you are born into; and they are questioning that choice. Frequently these days, the prevalent opinion is that religion as an idea is a  relic and pretty irrelevant today. We don't need religion and its unnecessary, meaningless and sometimes hilarious practices. A popular perception about religion, and not just in the vocal atheist sections of society,  is that it is a regressive institution, a largely negative idea. Many ideas and practices in organized religions are indeed outdated and downright bigoted.

Religious adherents on the other hand claim that there is a sound basis for many of the practices. This is seen in Hinduism, and the explanations range from the symbolic to the scientific. Similar claims about scientific knowledge exist in Islam and other faiths. This has now been parodied a lot and even gave rise to a recent controversy involving Richard Dawkins. Quite apart from its symbolism and practices, religion has found some support from at least one contemporary thinker for its ideas and pedagogy..

So it was fascinating to read about evidence in support of some religious practices, practices which could otherwise be characterized as part of the supposed collective brainwashing in religious teachings. (The debate about whether Buddhism and Hinduism encourage people to think, question and debate ideas rather than restrict themselves to a singular dogma is a different topic and  can't be covered here. Perhaps later.)

In their book Willpower, Roy Baumeister and John Tierney describe how experiments have found that certain religious practices and beliefs are useful in conditioning and building up a person's willpower, in addition to many other benefits.

Any sort of religious activity increases your longevity, according to the psychologist Michael McCullough...he looked at more than three dozen studies that had asked people about their religious devotion and then kept track of them over time. It turned out that the nonreligious people died off sooner, and that at any given point, a religiously active person was 25 % more likely than a nonreligious person to remain alive. That's a pretty hefty difference...that result (published in 2000) has since been confirmed by other researchers.

Why would this be?

 [social scientists] have found more earthly causes. Religious people are less likely than others to develop unhealthy habits, like getting drunk, engaging in risky sex, taking illicit drugs, and smoking cigarettes. They're more likely to wear seat belts, visit a dentist and take vitamins. They have (and I think this is the clincher) better social support, and their faith helps them cope psychologically with misfortunes. And they have better self-control,... [this was] recently concluded after analyzing hundreds of studies of religion and self control over eight decades. ...Religion promotes family values and social harmony, in part because some values gain in importance by being supposedly linked to God's will or other religious values. Less obvious benefits included the finding that religion reduces people's inner conflicts among different goals and values.....conflicting goals impede self-regulation, so it appears that religion reduces such problems by providing believers with clearer priorities. More important,religion affects two central mechanisms for self-control: building willpower and improving monitoring.

Baumeister and Tierney go on to explain that last point in detail - how prayers and meditation help build mental discipline, how practices like having to pray five times a day (Islam), fasting (Yom Kippur Lent, Ramadan and the many Hindu fasts) , specific patterns of eating (kosher, vegetarianism), adopting and holding specific poses (kneeling or sitting cross legged) are uncomfortable and require discipline to maintain them. As for monitoring, they argue that "religious people tend to feel that someone important is watching them". As most of us must've experienced at some point, our behavior is more righteous and proper when we know we are being observed by others. Religious rituals also encourage monitoring through rituals such as confession and Yom Kippur- that "require people to reflect on their moral failures and other shortcomings". (Perhaps Thanksgiving might be added to this list.)

Since these practices require a certain level of discipline to begin with, there is a likelihood that people who are religious actually start out with higher self-control than average. However, even after statistically accounting for this possibility, the evidence points out that self-control improves with religion.

Interestingly, the book points out that people did not get this benefit of self-control when they attend religious services for extrinsic reasons - like wanting to impress others or make connections.

Behavioral research also points out another benefit of religion - less cheating. In one of his many experiments about dishonesty and cheating, Prof. Dan Ariely and his team from Duke University showed how priming (where they expose participants to a stimulus that alters their behavior as a result) people with a reminder about being honest and not cheating before a test actually resulted in less cheating. This is fascinating because simply a reminder to not cheat (whether through a call to conscience, a simple reminder or the idea that God is watching you and His commandments forbid you from cheating) resulted in less cheating.  This priming need not be religious in nature, but in the real world, it often is. Obviously, with many godmen and churches involved in corruption and very lurid scandals, this connection between honesty and cheating might be hard to believe. One could argue however, as mentioned above, that those who participate in religion for external reasons do not experience the same benefits as those who do it with genuine belief. Thus, the religious people who do indulge in criminal acts might not be into the religion for their beliefs.

The conflict between religion and atheism (and within different religions) is only going to get starker. Whatever happens on the global stage, it is certain that many of us have a choice at an individual level to take sides on this. Information like this will certainly help me to make my choices, how about you?

Discipline

A realization from failing at this many times - performing a task is rarely difficult. Getting around to start it without worrying about the entire possible and probable chain of events that might happen later on is the real hard part.

For an over-thinker, it is hard not to indulge oneself in all likely scenarios of what might and might not happen in the future, to burden oneself with guilt for not doing something you've agreed with yourself to do, to wonder what is wrong with you if you commit a mistake.

And this is what makes it hard to stick, rather to make discipline a part of your life. The over thinking.

Ping Pong-ing the Paper

A good tip from the big boss. Whenever you get stuck with the draft for a paper or a particular section, write up whatever you have come up with - even if it is just bullet points - then send it to a colleague or friend in the know (best if it is a collaborating colleague or senior). Have them send it back to you in a few days with their additions/ideas. Usually by the time it comes back to you, you will look at the thing with fresh ideas and a different frame of mind. Keep this back and forth of the paper going till it gets done.

What I've been getting from running

1) The ability to persevere when you feel and think that you are completely drained or that there is no hope left of reaching your goal.

I've lost count of how many times this has happened. Having gone through the process painfully and slowly, I distinctly remember how hopeless and lonely you feel when you are running alone on a trail, miles from the nearest drinking water/food source or any transport to take you back home. And you've been running for several hours already, your thighs and hips are aching with every step - getting stiffer and tighter, feet feel rubbery and sore , knees hurt, sweat has drenched your body but has dried on your face leaving coarse salty residue that itches. Sometimes you simply forget the reason why you are doing this. It is in those moments when you stick to the plan in spite of all that and keep taking one step after another in a journey bereft of hope, that your mettle is tested. Keep moving and doing what you think is right even if your mind keeps telling you that you are not going to make it. This lesson has proved useful in many other areas.

I think that, like willpower, perseverance is a quality you acquire through practice - regular, painful practice. A typical novel or film hero often has this quality from birth, but I assume that is very rare in real life.

2) A changing perception of distance. 3 miles..10 miles..20 miles are not what they used to mean earlier.

3) A deeper appreciation for people who are physically active and who have shaped their bodies well through effort than through shortcuts.

4) A rewarding lifestyle.

5) Lots of free, organic, intracranial, noninvasive, endorphin shots.

This weekend's 8 mile run was pretty eventful, two bike accidents and yours truly hitting the dirt but escaping with only a graze on the knee. The landscape more than compensated for it - the river, evening sun being swallowed by clouds on the horizon, sea gulls going for a last catch and a cool breeze. Should've clicked a photo.

The next one

Exploring the mind-body connection has been a fascinating experience so far, not just in my personal sample size of one but in other people too. Humans respond so easily to ideas and words if they manage to penetrate their thoughts.

So far, my interest has been to use thoughts/ideas to create habits and change the context in which I perform actions so as to make it easier for me to stick to changes. Joining a team, getting a good hydration pack which will also hold my stuff while on a long run, having multiple alarms etc were ways to ensure that I did not have to rely too much on my willpower alone.

This has worked very well so far...except in the last training season. I had to scale back to a half marathon from a full one because I didn't put in the time and effort needed to train properly for the latter. It was easy to justify this with the fact of increased work, some boredom with running and overall life issues, but justifications don't get you to the finish line.

With the move to an invigorating new city though, things seem to be looking up.

The full-time work is still around and in fact more time consuming, but the context in which I live has changed. I haven't joined a running team here yet, but the city is full of runners and amazingly active people. Whether it is the workplace or my residential area, there is always someone breezing past. Something about watching fit and athletic people do something well makes you want to shed off your inertia. So while after the half marathon I dabbled in weight training and biking and a few odd exercises (kayaking! seven minute workout! yoga!); running is calling me back. And I've given in to the call. Re-experiencing the primal joy of running is different than the good soreness you feel after lifting weights. Plus the best way to explore a city is on foot.

I've managed to put on the miles sporadically in the past month or so and am feeling confident enough to dive into systematic training for the next big 'un. I also switched to thin soled 'barefoot' shoes last month, so it worked out well that I broke into them slowly rather than starting the training with them. I feel my speed has improved, but will need to accumulate data on this before I can be sure.

However, this time I don't have the support/context of a team. So this is where willpower will have to kick in. I will cheat a bit though - I've already set up an accountability system with a buddy in the former city who also needs someone to push him a bit for his workouts. So far, the going has been great.

I have some pleasant memories of logging the training progress for my first marathon. I'd like to repeat that here. This is especially useful for the solitary long runs, which are refreshing yet paradoxically exhausting both mentally and physically.

So here's to a full marathon in Fall (or earlier).

A lesson from Feynman

Don't think it is so different, being a scientist. The average person is not so far away from a scientist. He may be far away from an artist or poet or something, but I doubt that too. I think in the normal common sense of everyday life that there is a lot of the kind of thinking that scientists do.....

Really all we (scientists) do is a hell of a lot more of one kind of thing that is normal and ordinary! People do have imagination, they just don't work on it as long. Creativity is done by everybody, it's just that scientists do more of it.  What isn't ordinary is to do it so intensively that all this experience is piled up for all these years on the same limited subject. 

A scientist's work is normal activities of humans carried to a fault, in a very exaggerated form. Ordinary people do do it as often, or, as I do, think about the same problem everyday. Only idiots like me do that! Or Darwin, or somebody who worries about the same question. "Where do the animals come from?" Or, "What is the relation of species?" A scientist works on it, and thinks about it for years! What is do, is something that common people often do,but so much more that it looks crazy! But it's trying to find the potentiality as a human being.

For example, neither you nor I have muscles that stand way out on our arms like these fabulous guys. For us that would be impossible. Well they work and they work and they work on it. In that case, it might be a fault. How big can you make those muscles? How can you make the chest look great? They try to find out how far you can go.And therefore, they do something with an intensity that is out of the ordinary. It doesn't mean that we never lift weights. All they do is lift weights more. But, like us, they're trying to find the greatest potentiality of human beings' activity in a certain direction.

-Richard Feynman
Feyman's rainbow, A search for beauty in Physics and in Life. By Leonard Mlodinow

The book chronicles some exchanges between Mlodinow, then a new postdoctoral fellow at Caltech unsure of himself and Feynman, the resident genius, during the last few years of Feynman's life in the early 1980s as he was battling cancer.

New running experiment

Back after almost a month's hiatus! Didn't realise it had been so long. When work is going at a great pace, it becomes easier to ignore other things. But I made some deliberate time today to write, even if it only a short post (as I suppose most of my posts will be for some time)

I've kept up with running and added weight training to it. Although I wanted to do free weights, the instructor was more keen on machines. Once the body gets used to it, the free weights are to be added later on. I don't understand the logic behind this. Would've loved to start a program like the Stronglifts 5x5. But that would be more time commitment than I can handle right now. Minimalism in goals is important too.

The new running experiment I'm doing is simply to run shorter distances but at a faster pace. Why? Because it's more fun, takes less time, is more intense (hence better cardio and adds power) and I'm terribly slow at running anyway. So, increasing the baseline pace will probably help me run a faster marathon next time. Let's see the results six months from now.

Poverty

Found this on facebook, unusually informative for that social network. Will put down my thoughts on this later.

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

The idea suddenly struck them one day. Both had returned to India in the vague hope that they could be of use to their country. But they knew the people of this land so little. Tushar suggested one evening — “Let us try to understand an ‘average Indian', by living on an ‘average income'.” His friend Matt was immediately captured by the idea. They began a journey which would change them forever.

To begin with, what was the average income of an Indian? They calculated that India's Mean National Income was Rs. 4,500 a month, or Rs. 150 a day. Globally people spend about a third of their incomes on rent. Excluding rent, they decided to spend Rs. 100 each a day. They realised that this did not make them poor, only average. Seventy-five per cent Indians live on less than this average.

The young men moved into the tiny apartment of their domestic help, much to her bemusement. What changed for them was that they spent a large part of their day planning and organising their food. Eating out was out of the question; even dhabas were too expensive. Milk and yoghurt were expensive and therefore used sparingly, meat was out of bounds, as were processed food like bread. No ghee or butter, only a little refined oil. Both are passionate cooks with healthy appetites. They found soy nuggets a wonder food — affordable and high on proteins, and worked on many recipes. Parle G biscuits again were cheap: 25 paise for 27 calories! They innovated a dessert of fried banana on biscuits. It was their treat each day.

Restricted life

Living on Rs.100 made the circle of their life much smaller. They found that they could not afford to travel by bus more than five km in a day. If they needed to go further, they could only walk. They could afford electricity only five or six hours a day, therefore sparingly used lights and fans. They needed also to charge their mobiles and computers. One Lifebuoy soap cut into two. They passed by shops, gazing at things they could not buy. They could not afford the movies, and hoped they would not fall ill.

However, the bigger challenge remained. Could they live on Rs. 32, the official poverty line, which had become controversial after India's Planning Commission informed the Supreme Court that this was the poverty line for cities (for villages it was even lower, at Rs. 26 per person per day)?

Harrowing experience

For this, they decided to go to Matt's ancestral village Karucachal in Kerala, and live on Rs. 26. They ate parboiled rice, a tuber and banana and drank black tea: a balanced diet was impossible on the Rs. 18 a day which their briefly adopted ‘poverty' permitted. They found themselves thinking of food the whole day. They walked long distances, and saved money even on soap to wash their clothes. They could not afford communication, by mobile and internet. It would have been a disaster if they fell ill. For the two 26-year-olds, the experience of ‘official poverty' was harrowing.

Yet, when their experiment ended with Deepavali, they wrote to their friends: “Wish we could tell you that we are happy to have our ‘normal' lives back. Wish we could say that our sumptuous celebratory feast two nights ago was as satisfying as we had been hoping for throughout our experiment. It probably was one of the best meals we've ever had, packed with massive amounts of love from our hosts. However, each bite was a sad reminder of the harsh reality that there are 400 million people in our country for whom such a meal will remain a dream for quite some time. That we can move on to our comfortable life, but they remain in the battlefield of survival — a life of tough choices and tall constraints. A life where freedom means little and hunger is plenty...

Plenty of questions

It disturbs us to spend money on most of the things that we now consider excesses. Do we really need that hair product or that branded cologne? Is dining out at expensive restaurants necessary for a happy weekend? At a larger level, do we deserve all the riches we have around us? Is it just plain luck that we were born into circumstances that allowed us to build a life of comfort? What makes the other half any less deserving of many of these material possessions, (which many of us consider essential) or, more importantly, tools for self-development (education) or self-preservation (healthcare)?

We don't know the answers to these questions. But we do know the feeling of guilt that is with us now. Guilt that is compounded by the love and generosity we got from people who live on the other side, despite their tough lives. We may have treated them as strangers all our lives, but they surely didn't treat us as that way...”

So what did these two friends learn from their brief encounter with poverty? That hunger can make you angry. That a food law which guarantees adequate nutrition to all is essential. That poverty does not allow you to realise even modest dreams. And above all — in Matt's words — that empathy is essential for democracy.

Love

Probably one of the most written about things in history.

Some swear about its magical effect in their lives, others swear at how it has destroyed theirs. Some insist that the meaning of life and even life itself is nothing but love, others deny its existence. Millions have wondered about it and a million others insist you are not even supposed to think about it, just feel it.

So what is this strange entity? With so many people doubting it, does it even exist? Is it measurable or has to be taken just on faith? Can it be proven?

About whether love exists - it is statistically impossible that billions of humans have passed on their genes to future generations merely out of an animal impulse. You can think of love as something that merely facilitates that drive or as the primary cause behind that drive. Either way, if even one couple has experienced what we conventionally think of as love or what we might disagree about is love, then logically it exists. And we have countless examples of it happening over centuries. People getting attracted to one another and bringing lasting happiness to one another.

Regardless of the statistics or the dry logic, I believe that love exists.

Biologically, chemically (maybe at the neurotransmitter level), psychologically and perhaps even mystically in ways we haven't understood yet, love exists. It can be a very beautiful emotion, elevating you to such highs as you've never felt before. And it can make you feel crushed and depressed when your expectations are not met. Sometimes, even if nothing goes ‘wrong’ per se, love can be full of a strange agony.

(It might be obvious by now that I'm not talking about the love we feel for our parents and siblings and friends. I'm talking about love for someone we might want to spend our lives with, have sex with, and perhaps even give in to the biological impulse to create little versions of ourselves.)

This love I'm talking about might look something like this. (Try telling them what they feel for each other is not real and doesn't exist.)

Or it may be very silent, insidious - not spoken about for years or acknowledged in public (not a very healthy way to be) but felt and noticed in little everyday things.

Now, to talk about something so 'all over the place' (in more ways than one), we need to define it, so we can wrap our heads around the concept. And this is where we hit the first roadblock.

No one knows how to define it, no one has the apt definition.

But then if something is so pervasive and near universal, is it really possible that no one knows how to define it? What if we flip that idea - maybe everyone knows how to define love. Maybe it's a malleable thing, which has something common at its core that everyone recognizes, but outwardly takes on as many forms as there are people out there experiencing it. Given how little we understand of this idea, I tend to agree with the latter viewpoint.

As such, I found the definition provided by Dr. Robert Peck in 'The Road Less Traveled' as a simple one; yet one that captures the very essence of the whole idea.

But before we go there let's look at some assumptions widely prevalent about love and which in my opinion distort the idea and have probably damaged a lot of people.

1)      Romantic love is the real/true love. More on this later. For now, suffice it to say that this is like saying climbing upto Everest’s base camp is equal to conquering the mountain.

2)      Love happens in a certain universal way (conveniently portrayed by most movies and books) and if it doesn’t happen to me, it doesn't exist. That is an understandably frustrated but nevertheless very childish (or teenage-ish) view of things. When an adult thinks like this, it's usually from a wave of anger and self-pity. They want to defend themselves against disappointment and hurt. The longer this wave persists, the more you can be sure they will entrench themselves deeper in this sorry mentality. And I'm guessing many people do spend their entire lives thinking like this, being bitter. Feeling love for someone is a very intimate process and by extension, it can be very different for everyone. We’re not dealing with a universally true thing like gravity, where it applies equally to everyone (heck, even gravity acts differently on different bodies). If someone has a restricted, uncompromising view (a view thoroughly embedded in society's psyche through popular culture) of how they want love to happen to them then it’s simply their loss when it doesn’t turn out that way. Obviously, they are closing their minds to other possibilities and opportunities. If you can’t process the disappointments and compromises that are almost inevitable with love without letting it poison your attitude to others, then maybe it isn’t for you. Which brings me to …

3)      Everyone falls in love. Maybe. No one knows for sure. But I doubt it. It is far more likely that everyone gets attracted to someone at least once in the course of their lifetime. Maybe everyone feels romantic love for someone. But it is perfectly normal to not feel love or go through the process of falling in love or living with someone as a result of it. There are so many singles who live happily and maybe die happily too without going through that process.

4)      The love portrayed in romantic comedies is fascinating and can (should) happen to me. Yes, it is fascinating. But as I’ve written previously, it is better to look at these kinds of movies for what they are – a cleverly marketed product that is designed to be believable and sell to you a certain warm and reassuring fantasy. For one, they merely focus on the minor idea of romantic love and imagine it to be the real whole thing. If you take them any more seriously than you take science fiction movies, it’s your loss.

Probably the biggest disservice that such movies do to people is they help create an insidious mindset of entitlement in those who believe in their ideas. Suddenly, otherwise normal people start believing in the fantastic idea that some vague force called the universe should conspire and bring to them what is rightly owed to them – true love. This is lame and lazy thinking. I wonder if this ‘universe’ also subsequently conspires to bring about divorces or when someone murders their spouse for whatever reason.


No, it need not happen to you:
No one owes you love. To create and experience it with someone, (much as I hate to use the phrase) ‘you have to sell yourself’ and be wanted by the other person.

If you can offer what the other person wants (or thinks they want), and if they have what you desire then love might happen. The key ideas here are creating and making it happen. Go somewhere everyday and meet/ be social with new people. Or do daily things that make you a fascinating person.

Yes, it can and does happen without trying too (the idea portrayed in movies and books of how two people just fall in love irrationally) and if that is what you want, happy waiting to you. My best wishes; it just might happen.  

A much more rewarding experience is to make yourself desirable for yourself, doing things that make you a better person in as many ways as possible in your eyes. (Thinking in a bit detached manner, would you really like to be in a relationship with someone like you?) Understand and evaluate what you are bringing to the table and whether it is something that the other wants. And keep your eyes open for someone you like.The selling part will then happen with less effort, because the product is then pretty good (and trust me, the 'market'/demand is almost always up in this case). When rejection happens as it mostly will, love hasn’t ceased to exist as an entity or idea nor is it that you or the other person has suddenly turned undesirable (assuming of course that either of you did not do something assholey or are jerks by nature). What happened is simply a rejection of what was on offer. Either find a new ‘buyer’ or improve the product (you). Or don't! That's perfectly fine too if you can live peacefully in that manner.

Romantic love could be a great start to creating actual love and is an experience to die for in itself, but it is definitely not the whole thing, nor is it a mandatory step towards feeling love for someone.

Going back to the analogy of climbing used above, you can fly to the Everest base camp and begin your journey from there (I guess that's what happens with arranged marriages!). The thrill of climbing still lies ahead. Arguably, a more fulfilling experience may be to undertake the journey from sea level to the top. But it isn’t the one true path, because there is no such thing as the one true path of love.

Romantic love isn’t the end all and be all of love (which is exactly the opposite of what most romantic comedies portray). It is the business card or résumé that gets you interested in a person. Making the contents of your résumé very attractive (being very romantic because you want someone to fall in love with you) can get you places and lead to some fun times during the interview and early days of the job. But when things start getting real, what matters is whether you deliver on what you've promised. Much better to have a real, admirable résumé that will increase the likelihood of getting you the kind of opportunities that are fit for you. And let romance be the bonus to that.

Now that we've seen what love isn't, let's try to see what love is -

"The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

I admire this interpretation because it is simple and intuitively feels true to me. It acknowledges that you have to work to make this come true, there has to be a will, you have to extend yourself. It describes love in the context of the impulse and force that drives all humans - growth. And it isn't about just giving or receiving alone. Love has to be selfish at times as it is selfless. Dr. Peck clubs together all sorts of things into 'spiritual growth' - but for the purpose of this already too long post I interpret it to mean growth as a person. Spiritual, personal, physical, financial, sexual, psychological and all different kinds of -als count towards making a person whole. The more you and your partner fulfill your respective growth potential in these, the stronger will be your love.

So if you truly love someone, you will help them grow as a person (referred to conventionally as bringing out the best in someone) and expect nothing less from them. That is the part that takes hard work.

Once you sit down to write about love, it's hard to stick to a word limit. But I'll stop here for now. Perhaps more words will come later.

What is humility?

Lovely answer by Carl Rex Hubbard II on a forum:

In your opinion, what is humility? Is humility a virtue or a vice? Is it possible to have both humility and pride?

My view is this. Humility is an awareness of one's limitations. It is an honest evaluation of what one is capable of and how one stands in relation to one's circumstances.

Humility is a virtue, though it is a contingent virtue. It is a virtue in most situations but not all. 

It is possible for someone to be both humble and proud. Here is an example. 

A gold medalist can be proud of his achievement. He can proudly claim to be the best in the world at his sport. But at the same time he must admit that it was only with the help of his trainers, family, and friends that he was able to win. He must acknowledge the ability of his opponents and he must admit that he may not be the victor the next time he competes. 

If he has this attitude, then he is both proud and humble. 

We can all be proud of the fact that we are smarter than most. But we must also admit that we are not the smartest, that our intelligence is no guarantee against error, and that intelligence without work ethic means little.

Carl Rex Hubbard II

The insidious addictions

Matt Frazier over at No Meat Athlete has another great post about habits and the lessons he learned during a month of practicing discipline consciously.

I could relate almost completely to point number three in his list (emphasis mine):

3. Recognize the distractions and addictions that are — to be blunt — ruining your life.

Again, I’ll point to email. It was my main digital addiction. I imagine that Facebook and TV are bigger ones for most people, but email was mine.
In short: Email is where I learn about new opportunities, so it’s fun for me to check it. Although I quickly learned that it was stupid and unproductive to leave Gmail open while I was trying to work, email remained my little reward when I was done. Soon, the addiction worsened, and checking email became my default behavior.

Just got in from a run? Check email. Finished reading a chapter in a book? Check email. Finished a walk with the family? Check email. First thing in the morning, last thing at night? Check email.
 

Checking email became the reward for everything else in life, my home base. The state of checking email was my steady state, the state I always strived to return to.

 

Centering your schedule around something so meaningless is a recipe for emptiness in your life.
 

To break free of it, you just need to learn to sit with the urge. Recognize when you’re feeling that pull to do the empty, addictive behavior, and just be okay with not doing it. Sit there. Or better, start that other, important thing — you know, the one you always say you don’t have time to do.

It doesn’t take long before the previous way of doing things — think about it, treating email or Facebook or TV as your reward for hanging out with your family? — seems pretty ridiculous. Once you’ve recognized these addictions for what they are, you can confine them to neat little time boxes, enjoy them for a few minutes each day (or just kill them entirely), and all of a sudden there’s plenty of space for richness in your life.
 

My experience has been a lot similar, especially with email and facebook. Every time I log on to facebook now (after reactivating it because a friend wanted to tag me), the posts seem largely redundant. Could be that I'm friends with the most boring people on earth or that the interesting ones do not use facebook. Whatever the reason, it has definitely lost its ability to draw me into clicking and reading on the site. Matt used the exact word I had in mind - ridiculous - when I think about how I used to compulsively check it a few years ago.

Saying that things like email and facebook addiction ruin your life might be a stretch for some people. And it is. Except when the operative word is addiction.

If you factor in the time spent on these by addicts, the way the content shapes their mind and thoughts, how they subsequently alter their actions and choices based on what they've read, the loss of focus - then no amount of TED talks and positive/interesting/funny/poignant articles and pictures that facebook or your email might provide can make up for the damage caused to your life.

You choose

We can debate free will and destiny till we have neither left and it won't make any difference to how we live. A more direct and useful way of resolving this for our day-to-day life is to understand that things that are out of our control, both good and (especially) bad, can and will happen to us.

Even so, it is in our hands how we react to them.

So apart from choosing what to do, we also have the choice to react the way we want to...to things that we didn't do or didn't want to have done to us.

Best summarized in The Answer Man:

Why can't I do the things I want to do? There's so much I know I'm capable of that I never actually do. Why is that?  

The trick is to realize that you're always doing what you want to do... always. Nobody's making you do anything. Once you get that, you see that you're free and that life is really just a series of choices. Nothing happens to you. You choose.

Asking

There's value in charting your own path.

Then there are times when it just makes sense to follow a path that others have created.

Why is it so god-awfully hard to differentiate when to do which?

It isn't actually that hard to differentiate. Usually, your instincts and common sense prove to be a decent guide. Also, more tangible things like the time available and how much effort you are willing to put into it.

For example while creating new habits, after failing plenty of times, it made sense for me to look at how others had been doing it successfully and emulate them (it worked). The same might be true for creating a business from scratch or even routine office work. You just have to see how it was done by others and learn from there, improving as well as increasing the efficiency. Of course, the challenges you face might be different and you'll have to adjust your course for them.But that is how growth occurs. By standing on the shoulders of those before you. You don't have to re-invent the wheel all the time.

It might not hold true for other things like painting or creating a niche business where there is no precedent. Your art isn't going to be called great if you simply copy the style of some great artists. There, it's better to become the deaf frog in the story, who climbs out of the well not hearing the discouraging opinions of others who say it can't be done or that it should be done a certain way.

When laid out like this, things looks fairly simple.

The trouble starts when our innate ego and arrogance (as well as ignorance) creeps in. Suddenly even if a solution or a great suggestion is handed to us on a platter, we refuse to follow it. It's mind boggling how stupid you look to a detached observer when you do this. Not that that should matter. The worrisome point being you damage your own chances at success by being pig-headed about following your own way when someone else has figured out a solution. The flip-side, of not accepting the discomfort of creating your own path when the situation calls for it, is equally self-defeating.

It's better to make a thumb rule of asking, before you embark on some new change, whether this has been done before by others and whether it is wiser to follow them or find your own way. A little time spent contemplating this, keeping aside your self-importance, will save you a lot of time and heartburn later on.

Vegan Continuum

Original graphic by Kimberley Steele. Image found here.

Perhaps in a few generations, we will divide people in categories like -

"Pure-bloods" - someone who has been vegan since birth

"Redemptees" - Lifelong vegetarians who have turned to veganism.

"Tainted bloods" - a former non-vegetarian who is now a vegan

"The Lost/Evil ones" - Those who continue to eat meat even after being told about veganism.

Gratitude

Sometimes, it's shocking when I realize after some thought how the 'few' resources I have are actually an immense advantage.

A simple example - I can put in a run late at night, even midnight, if I haven't done that in daytime. And I've run a lot during evenings than I have in the mornings. This is because of the fitness center in my apartment. Without much preparation beforehand, without having to take any precautions (safe routes), dress up for the weather, carry water and money/keys, without having to drive, I can simply get up and get my regular dose of mood lifter with just an elevator ride below. There is a compromise of course. The treadmill can never match the trail. But a run is a run. And the endorphins don't care about the surface you ran on. Such a simple thing can keep your days and nights on track.

Once you start noticing the things you have an advantage at, the list keeps growing. Your health, your family, your education, the fact that you are able to piss and poop normally! (years ago I had read a Reader's Digest story about a Somalian girl who suffered female genital mutilation, later on escaping and becoming a supermodel. She described, among other terrible things she had to undergo, how even urinating daily was a painful experience for her because of what they did to her. Then there's also seeing people in the hospital with catheters and colostomies. You can't help but think how lucky you are.)

And as this realization becomes a recurring thought over days, it seems stranger and stranger to waste your life and time doing things you are not interested in or which add no value to your life or to that of others you care for.

You never know when something you value will suddenly disappear.

Run while you can. Do things you want to do while you can.

One step after another

When you are in the last few miles of a long run (which often turn out to be the hardest) and are on the verge of giving up, you can't afford to think of how things would've turned out 'if only' you had done things differently before the run or during the earlier miles. Neither does it help to think of what will happen after the run.

Any thoughts at that point about the past or about giving up will hinder rather than help you.

The fastest way to get relief and to not regret it later on, is to keep going.

The feeling is crazy because here are you are exhausted and hurting and your legs don't want to move anymore. A small break, just a teeny weeny one minute walking break would make you feel refreshed you think. Everything in your body tells you to stop there or take a pause. Many things in your mind keep hammering that too. Our minds are so used to a culture of convenience that it doesn't make any sense at all to go through this entirely voluntary madness. We are surrounded by things designed to make every small slice of our life as comfortable as we can afford it to be. Our chairs, bed, quilts, couches, cars, carpets, gadgets, food, desserts, furniture, language, gestures, TV shows, social networks....everything has evolved to provide comfort and convenience. Why then should you put yourself through the misery of those last few miles?

The answer is different for everyone.

However, the way to reach the destination honorably remains the same. One step after another. Maybe your stride and breathing is now more efficient than before and you are running smarter, not just harder. But it is still one step after another.

And the same answer applies when you are stuck at some point in life, outside of running. It doesn't matter that you've come so far,  that you didn't get a fair deal in life (the weather isn't always perfect for running), that you faltered and had to stop running for some time in the past, that there's no one to cheer you on when you think you need it most, that you've temporarily forgotten why you are doing this, that others are doing this way better than you, that you suck at this. The only thing that matters is you keep going even if it hurts so damn much.

Create a habit of waking up early - a guide

Habits can be deceptively easy to form. Until you actually try one your mind has been resisting.

For some people, waking up early comes naturally. So this post isn't for them. This also isn't for you if you don't feel any particular need for waking up early or if there is someone reliable around to wake you up when you need to.

After the meditation habit, this one was on my goals list. But I kept falling off the trail for one reason or another. Now that I've formed this habit, will note down what I did in case I have to go through it again.

The following is based on a combination of methods described by Leo Babauta, Scott Young, 'No meat athlete' and Maneesh Sethi. And my own experience, of course.

Before you commit to making this change - Have a reason to do so.

There is nothing spectacularly remarkable about waking up early. And it isn't necessary at all. (In fact there are many people out there, happy and productive with a late-to-bed late-to-rise cycle. Some of the most successful drug dealers and shady businessmen do the bulk of their activities after 10 pm and spend most of the day in bed.)

However, if after thinking about it you do find some good reasons why you want to start waking up early, it will make things that much easier for you. Write the reasons down. A vague goal like leading a better life or getting life in order will not help you sustain this habit for more than a few days, if at all. The reasons could be as mundane as they were for me - finding time to run/walk in the morning because I usually procrastinate on doing so in the evening (watching the sunrise is a bonus). But it should be something you really really want.

So invest some time in thinking why you want to do so. If you see yourself doing well as a night owl, follow that.

Once you find a reason (s)....

Step 1: Decide on an activity to do in the morning immediately after waking up.

This should be something you really like doing, something you look forward to, preferably something that isn't hard to do. Could be reading a book or taking a walk or drinking tea/coffee, whatever you like. Avoid the internet at this time. You don't want to replace one unwanted habit with a potentially addictive one. Also, the internet has a way of making you spend way more time on it than you intend to. So choose an activity that you enjoy and that will keep you up. But something that is easy to do so your brain isn't averse to start doing it.

Step 2: Choose a date to get started, preferably in a week or so.

This lets your mind dwell on the change and get prepared slowly. You start expecting the change. 'From tomorrow, I'm going to to wake up early' doesn't work in my experience. Neither does, 'I'm trying these days...' What does work is making a decision on Jan 7 that 'I'm going to wake up early everyday from Jan 14 to Feb 14'. A specific time frame for your brain to process makes this change easier. Aim for just 30 days of this, not an indefinite period.

Step 3: Choose a time that is close to your current waking time. 

Even if your goal is to wake up at 5 am, going for that right from the start when your current waking time is 8 am will make things harder for you to sustain. Your body can take this sort of change, but only if forced (as in an army barracks) or if you have some really intense commitment to the goal. So choose just a half hour earlier or even 15 minutes earlier than your usual time. Then every few days as you succeed in waking up at that time, push back the waking time 5-10 mins till you reach your final goal.



Step 4: Have a foolproof alarm - something that will ensure you get up

Invest in a good clock if  need be or swallow your pride to ask someone living with you to help you get up early (if they are an early riser). Whatever you use, make sure it gets you out of the drowsy state of mind  long enough for you to know what you are doing up so early and start doing that activity you decided. Place the alarm away from the bed so you have get up and walk to shut it off.

Step 5: Set up accountability

This was the single most useful step for me without which I'd have failed. Many of us are whip-driven creatures and like to avoid punishment more than gaining pleasure. To incorporate this aspect into habit making, set up a system so that if you fail you have to undergo some form of punishment. For me this was a simple deal with a friend - if I did not walk over to his place (about 10 mins away) and text him details of any car parked in front of his building by a certain time in the early morning, I'd have to pay him 5 bucks for that day. This achieved two goals - accountability and a simple mindless activity to do immediately after waking up. By the time I came back after 20 mins I wasn't sleepy anymore. Choose something that you would hate to do if you miss.

Step 6: If you miss, start again.

Life will happen. Sometimes you won't be able to get to bed on time. Do not despair. Cut your losses and re-start as if nothing happened. If this happens several days in a row, then there might be something significant that needs changing. But an occasional slip-up is no cause for discouragement.


Step 7: Decide on bedtime. Wind down with rituals.

Count back the hours from when you need to wake up and choose a bed time based on how much sleep you need and start winding down about 1-2 hours before that. Winding down could be some rituals like brushing teeth (also implies not eating anything after say 10 pm) , a shower, reading from a book, shutting off all screens (phone laptop, e readers), dimming the lights, meditating, whatever. Rituals are vastly underrated. Follow them.

Step 8: If you can't sleep, don't force it.

Usually, following the above steps will make it easier to fall asleep. Also, getting tired through exercise is the best sleep-inducing drug. If however, you can't sleep in the early days of this habit making, don't force it. There will be such days - try to find things to do at such times that don't involve computers, eating, or loud music.


Avoid taking on other habit - commitments at this time. There isn't much benefit to stretching your willpower thin.

All of these steps (in no particular order) seem to be too many complications and work for something as simple as waking up early. However, once the habit is formed, the number (and quality) of hours you add to your day along with the feeling of well-being, make doing all this worth it. What's more, once the habit is formed even disturbances in your schedule or the occasional late night out doesn't affect it.

Supersaturated solution

Garbage in, Garbage out.

What you read, what you see (and enjoy) deeply impacts how you think and the way you interpret events and people. These things are also major factors influencing what kind of ideas you generate, how you detect patterns, think of abstract concepts and make connections between disparate entities.

This is an obvious piece of wisdom, but is sometimes overlooked because it is so obvious.

In Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig describes the incident where his thinking process started coming together into one coherent mass. Although in the beautiful analogy below, his emphasis is on the suddenness of the event, in this post I'm focusing on the causes leading up to that event.

That was the moment it all started. That was the seed crystal.

A powerful fragment of memory comes back now. The laboratory. Organic Chemistry. He was working with an extremely supersaturated solution when something similar had happened. 

A supersaturated solution is one in which the saturation point, at which no more material will dissolve, has been exceeded. This can occur because the saturation point becomes higher as the temperature of the solution is increased. When you dissolve the material at a high temperature and then cool the solution, the material sometimes doesn't crystallize out because the molecules don't know how. They require something to get them started, a seed crystal, or a grain of dust, or even a sudden scratch or tap on the surrounding glass.

He walked to the water tap to cool the solution but never got there. Before his eyes, as he walked, he saw a star of crystalline material in the solution appear and then grow suddenly and radiantly until it filled the entire vessel. He saw it grow. Where before was only clear liquid there was now a mass so solid he could turn the vessel upside down and nothing would come out.

The one sentence "I hope you are teaching Quality to your students" was said to him, and within a matter of a few months, growing so fast you could almost see it grow, came an enormous, intricate, highly structured mass of thought, formed as if by magic.

Whether we get a seed crystal to consolidate our thoughts into a clear, significant mass or not, the prerequisite for forming even less well-thought out ideas remains the same - saturating our mind with information and thoughts relevant to the topic (prior to that event, Pirsig had spent years reading, exploring and thinking about Quality). It is only when we fill or over-fill our mind with thoughts about our chosen subject, obsessively, passionately focusing on it till our brain becomes supersaturated with it, that we can create something truly remarkable.

Unless we do that (passionate pursuit), Prof. Larry Smith argues, we will not have great results.

If the solution contains enough of other residues and impurities, it may not get saturated with the stuff you want. If you fill your mind with pop culture, crap movies, news, cat videos, funny ads and  social media when these are not part of your passion, you lose the opportunity to saturate your mind with the stuff that really matters to you and consequently the opportunity to generate the ideas and actions you might otherwise produce.

In that case, the ideas that have gone into your mind are going to inevitably affect what comes out of your mind. Garbage in, garbage out.

But then is it possible to altogether avoid garbage? Is all garbage bad? Perhaps the key is to keep the level of garbage you put in your mind low enough so that it doesn't affect the outcome. Learning to say No would be critical then.

I don't know the boundaries to this kind of obsession, whether there are any or where they are drawn. Would be worth it to find out.

Snow run

I hope this turns into an annual pilgrimage of sorts. Almost exactly a year ago I did this on a different trail.

December-January usually brings some snow to this area. Not enough to cause major disruptions, just to make it feel wintery.

Last year, my running group had planned a 15 mile run on one of the trails. They had to cancel at the last minute, but by then I was already one hour into the run because I'd started earlier. So I continued by myself.

And it turned out to be a beautiful experience. The snow covered path, trees and branches, the river frozen in patches, the footprints left by the few people and animals before me, the silence disturbed only by my steps and the occasional call of an animal or bird and the gurgling of the river where it hadn't frozen over. The weather was overcast but there was adequate light. I would come across a person after running for several miles, no one else was around most of the time. Even saw a big deer a couple of times who'd pause and look at me from a distance and then bound away. The only evidence of modern technology were the occasional caution signs and markings.

When someone says the word solitude, it evokes abstract images in my mind. There is a lot of overlap of that concept with silence, peace, aloneness and tranquility. But in those miles of running, I guess I found a very tangible sense of what solitude looks and feels like.

This weekend, an 11 mile run brought back that feeling. Some photos from the trail:

Some people think of it as unnecessary torture - running in minus 15 degree temperatures in distant areas early on a saturday morning when you could be in your warm bed under a quilt or perhaps having a hot cup of coffee. But I guess this is one of those things you understand and perhaps start liking, only if you do it. Sort of an acquired taste. 

The first few miles of the run make you feel really good (hey, you made it there overcoming the huge internal  resistance of waking up on a cold morning and reaching the trail with running gear and supplies.That itself makes you pat yourself on the back). As your body slowly warms up and your feet get used to stepping a certain way to avoid slipping, you start noticing your surroundings better - especially the quiet, mixed with sounds you miss otherwise. A breaking twig here, snow slipping from overladen leaves there. 

Occasionally, a patch of motionless dry grass and leaves suddenly erupts with dozens of little birds flying out of their well-camouflaged spots as you run by.

I let the environment sink in for the first half of the run. Then it's time for some music since it can get pretty lonely out there. Luckily for me, this came up in my iPod to perfectly complement the surroundings.

Of course, this was followed by Chayya Chayya from Dil Se and some other dhinchak songs that I have no idea how they landed in my playlist.

The mood-elevating effect of the run goes on increasing till you are well past the halfway mark. That's the point, the part where 3/4 of the run is over, at which your body starts protesting. For me, it's mostly the thighs and knees that scream. When I started running seriously more than a year ago, it used to be the shins and side-stitches. Good to know that different parts of my body co-operate in the protest.

That is the part of the run where you have to talk yourself into not stopping. It is so very tempting to take a walking break then. 'Just a few minutes of walking and I'll run better after that'. But it's a mind trap. It reduces your efficiency immensely and it becomes harder to get back into the flow of running with every such break. This is the part which shows you what you are made of, whether you can push yourself enough. I try to make things easier by pampering myself a bit- a chocolate gel pack even if I'm not feeling very tired, some music..whatever it takes to keep going.

The last mile or so is mostly a blur.

In a sense, I give up hope of ever making it back, give up plans about things I'll do when I'm done. Self doubt and a dark foreboding fill up the mind - 'why am I doing this, I'm no good at this, there are so many mistakes I've done in life, this isn't helping any of that, this is so stupid, just stop!'.

And I have stopped at this point on some previous runs. It doesn't help, only makes you feel worse. So now,  when this happens I just keep placing one foot after the other. There's no other goal left in life for those last ten minutes but to keep the back straight, arms up and not stop.

And then there's the rush of joy and relief as you recognize the familiar landmark which tells you - you are done. All the pain and sweat and discomfort and doubt - all of it goes away in that one instant. You slow down and stretch and your body hurts. But it feels so good. You sit down and slowly bite into a juicy pear.

If that moment doesn't count as one that makes you 'feel alive', I don't know what does.

There is something cathartic, something purifying about your mind and body going through a painful process like that and emerging from the other side. It's kind of a safe way to squeeze unnecessary negativity out of your mind and body.

Why shouldn't feeling alive like that count as a spiritual experience? For me, it does and hence I want to do this pilgrimage every year.

Romantic comedies

I enjoy watching romantic comedies. I really do. Who wouldn't? They're funny, feel-good, lighthearted and often tell a good story.

I like them the way I like science fiction, superhero, horror and slasher movies. Knowing that the things they show are far from real makes these genres more enjoyable. They fulfill one of the prime purpose of movies - to paint as glorious a fantasy as possible and let you revel in it. And from a distance too, if the fantasy is gruesome and dangerous.

Where romantic comedies differ is in the blurring of that line of fantasy and reality. The characters in these movies are ordinary people like you and me (although far more attractive....the creators of these dreams want you to aspire to being like them obviously). They have fairly normal lives, with events and situations and flaws that many of us can identify with. The characters laugh and weep and are vulnerable just like us. Sometimes they show our emotions better than we do. This makes the movie and the people in it very relatable. It is far too easy to see yourself as the office guy falling for the good looking girl or seeing someone cute at a wedding and pursuing them. These things happen everyday all around the world.

And this is where the problem starts. These characters are sometimes too close to real life. This leaves you with a strange combination where the characters are very life-like but the plot is still a fantasy. Much as I marvel at the capacities of the human brain,  I'm not sure it is rational enough to keep all of this sorted and well-delineated all the time.

How can we be sure that what we see and identify with and aspire to for a long time during our formative years (how many rom coms have you seen from the age of 14 till today?) hasn't impacted our ability to think and take decisions in a certain manner? Who is to say watching many movies like these doesn't introduce a systemic bias in the way we perceive relationships and other people? That they don't affect our expectations and assumptions about people?

In many of the romantic movies, an external force - God, Nature, Destiny, Fate, Serendipity - essentially something out of your control and (surprisingly) with your well-being and happiness at heart intervenes at opportune moments to bring people together. If the movie is particularly well crafted, we often miss this element and it is weaved very subtly into the narrative. But it's there always. This element, which is out of your control, forms the core of the 'fantasy' part of a rom-com. And by definition, it is extremely unlikely to happen to you in real life.

But many people miss that part, knowingly or unknowingly, because the canvas on which writers and directors paint a beautiful picture of your life is so very broad and oh-so-charming. In between all the adorable 'awww's and the poignant tender moments designed to open you up to beautiful possibilities in your life, it is easy to miss the element of fantasy that is holding up the entire picture.

As one trademark pithy Calvin and Hobbes truism goes:

Why isn’t my life like a situation comedy? Why don’t I have a bunch of friends with nothing better to do but drop by and instigate wacky adventures? Why aren’t my conversations peppered with spontaneous witticisms? Why don’t my friends demonstrate heartfelt concern for my well-being when I have problems?… I gotta get my life some writers.

The more effectively this element is hidden and blended into the movie, the better the final illusion. Alternately, a movie like serendipity might take a contrary approach and flaunt its supernatural element as its USP. It then becomes free to make its characters even more vulnerable and helpless, while retaining their charm by showing their struggles against their fate.

When someone starts relating  too much to movies and novels like these, while missing the fantasy part, I suspect there develops an undetected sense of entitlement, even in an otherwise self-reliant person. When things don't happen the way they do in the stories, that person might start asking questions like 'why doesn't something like this happen to me?' But underlying this question is the hidden assumption that something like this is supposed to happen to you. As if it is the norm or at least that it happens with a majority of people. Wanting things to happen to you, hoping for signs to guide you the 'right' way and other such wishes where the  locus of control is with some outer unknown power, are often seen in such cases.

Very few, if any, of these stories show the hard work that goes into making a successful relationship. They focus on the chemistry between couples, which can (if present in real life) be merely the first thing that brings people together. Arguably, it is neither the writer/director's job nor their intention to show how to build successful relationships. They want to entertain and sell you a story and they do so using whatever they can - it is fair to show an arbitrary fate bringing people together (supposedly meant to be with each other) in mysterious ways. But the way these stories are sold with the 'coming together' as the final step in happiness and bliss is deceptive at best, damaging at worst. And it isn't the seller's fault that you are deceived or damaged by this.

We all want to believe. Especially when a path to reach our soul-mate is shown to us in charming colors and sounds. Who doesn't want lovely dreams?

But as the cliché goes, the best way to realize a dream is to wake up.

Rules about people

I found this entry in one of my old diaries from some years ago. Turns out I did not have the common sense to note down the source. Anyway, credit to whoever wrote these first. And as I read them again with new eyes, I disagree with many of them.

1. Everyone is still a child regardless of age and everyone still needs the basic acceptance, attention and emotional stroking that children need.

2. 99% of the population have less than adequate self worth, self esteem, self-confidence and self-image.

3. The other 1% are lying.

4. People don't care how much you know. They do, however know how much you care. Learn to express, not impress.

5. Big listeners are popular. Big talkers are often lonely.

6. A compliment is worth a thousand presents.

7. Everyone must be forgiven unequivocally and permanently. Whatever they may have done, they are products of their own childhood. Anger and bitterness eat away at and destroy those who harbor those feelings and not those towards whom they are directed.

8. People who are angry are often those who are hurting themselves.

9. Everyone would like to have more control over at least one aspect of life, and everyone needs at least one person to whom they can open up completely.

10. No one really cares if you make a fool of yourself. Everyone is far too busy thinking about themselves and their own problems to care much about yours.

11. There's no such thing as rejection, simply a refusal of the product currently on offer. Don't take it personally.

12. Everybody communicates differently with words, feelings, pictures or gesticulations. To create rapport with them, you need to communicate in the same way they do.

13. People that are like each other, tend to like each other. Opposites do attract but often they eventually repel and destroy each other.

14. Do suffer fools gladly. There is actually no such thing as a fool, simply someone less fortunate or less gifted than you and and you can learn from everyone.

15. Never try to change someone (especially children). It becomes a statement that you do not like them.

16. People often do not mean what they say, yet they don't often say what they mean.

17. He who wins the argument, loses the war.

18. If you spend too much time thinking about yourself, then you're likely to end up by yourself.

19. Don't let anybody bounce checks in your emotional bank account. Nobody has the right to chop you down and make you feel small without your permission.

20. The immutable law of life can be stated in many ways:

"What goes around has a habit of coming around, although you might not receive back directly from the hand to whom you give."

"As you sow so shall you reap."

"If you are not getting what you want back out of people and life, then you are simply not putting enough in."


Heavily generalized as the list is, I found a few of these sensible in some contexts - points  1, 8 - 13, 18 and 19. The rest not so much.

Why twitter can get addictive

Here's why:

It fulfills that basic need of all humans - to connect, to feel appreciated. That's the Big Idea with all social sites.

Why twitter succeeds in particular is because here,  that Idea comes in small convenient packets that you can open anytime you want, with optional anonymity and the ability to quietly observe (if you don't feel like talking, just keep quite and observe - a luxury not afforded in real life). The cost of getting invested is very low and the returns are high.So it becomes easy to get hooked.

Add to that the constantly updated (if you follow the right people) information, the followers, the stars, RTs, trophies, mentions, display pictures, instagrams - so many ways to get validated and be heard! It's like being on a pulse intravenous dopamine drip. And you quickly develop tachyphylaxis to it.

I'm not in a position to judge the medium, since my experience with it is limited. These are observations. A lot of the pros and cons of the medium have to do with the user. Nurses and drug-addicts both use needles - to entirely different purposes. Cannot blame needles now, can we? I wouldn't blame twitter either.

One advantage to twitter is that you meet great people you otherwise might never have met (although there is no way to verify this). I definitely did meet and became friends with  some great people and I'm happy and grateful for that.

To play the devil's advocate and be entirely objective for a moment however, what are the costs of making these connections? In terms of time, lost productivity, lost growth, lost ideas, actions you could've taken?   And how real are these connections anyway? Perhaps the time I spent in connecting with anonymous people on twitter could've been better spent in connecting with people in real life? The latter is tougher but is it better? For every wonderful person I meet on twitter, who's to say there isn't another wonderful person I'm missing out in real life? and what if the latter relationship is more likely to be better for me in the long term?

There are people who use twitter in a very disciplined manner, for specific purposes and with specific objectives in mind. And more importantly, with time limits. I wonder how many of them are there, though. I suspect most  of them are in the 30 -60 age group. It'll be interesting to see, for every such 'power' user, how many twitter addicts one can find and what their characteristics are.

Twitter has impact on real life of course, it's not all virtual. Whether that impact is good or bad, depends on who you ask. This is especially apparent in politics and media.

I'm however more interested in the impact on people's individual lives, on their productivity, on long term satisfaction. If I could, I would love to set up a randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of twitter on everyday life. To see how having twitter in a person's life changes their personality and the choices and decisions they make versus those who don't use it.

A worrisome aspect about twitter is this - it is one of the easiest ways to avoid looking at problems in your own life, especially if you are pre-disposed to procrastination and anxiety.. That twitter is merely a distraction, would be an understatement. It helps in task avoidance in much the same way that TV and movies do. However, movies have time limits and with TV, the passive nature of the activity makes you get tired of it relatively early. Twitter on the other hand gives you the illusion of activity, without you doing much. Even if you know it is a sort of passive activity, it is easy to overlook that in the moment  since you are interacting with it regularly. To read new tweets, you have to click or refresh, go to other people's profiles, write something, star it, retweet it, think about how you are going to reply to something or how you are going to make your joke sound funnier. There is an insidious passivity to the whole thing since you aren't actually creating something new. You are sharing and reading and expressing, but the 'creation' itself, is just tweets.


Of course, if self expression is valuable to you, spending that time forming and sharing those tweets is worth it. But then we come back again to the point of the costs that you are paying for that ability, the potential for addiction and lost opportunities if any. Also, how valuable is unmitigated, relentless self-expression anyway?

And all this while, you are getting to see and learn things that others have done...the TED talks, the thought catalogs, the brain pickings,  blog posts forwarded with a 'briliiant' or 'excellent, must read' thrown in. Since our society places a high premium on these things, your brain can easily tell you that you are getting something valuable for your time spent on twitter.

In that swirl of self-validation, new information, humor, wit, sarcasm, self-expression, sharing and connection I wonder how many people are able to keep a cap on their twitter usage and assess objectively, whether that usage has given them what they wanted.

If you think you use twitter (or other sites) more than you should, perhaps making a list of things that brought value to you in the last couple of years and seeing how many of those come from your time spent on the site, would be a useful exercise.