A new training season

The training season for a long distance race is like a good book - it teaches you something new every time you go back to it.

I've run a couple of full and half marathons and my goal so far had been to be able to finish. This year however, I'm trying to actually race i.e run instead of jog. So most of my focus this training season is on improving my pace.

The most remarkable thing about this season is how it has changed the way I look at each run. When I first started running, there was the thrill and challenge of running farther than you've ever done before, so each training run would be motivated by a sort of passion. Then after the first few races, the passion died down a bit and a training run became a relatively casual affair for me - be it 3 miles or 9 miles or anything in between.  I knew I could finish it no matter what, so the main struggle was finding the time and making myself run regularly. A sore muscle here, a little pain over there didn't matter much. The point of the run would be just doing it.

Now however, I need to run at a certain pace - slower initially, then at target pace, then hold it above a certain threshold throughout so that the final average pace is what I want it to be. So each run is special now. Which in turn means I have to care about keeping my muscles in their best working condition, can't just dive in hoping I make the pace. I have to actually pay attention to stretching and warming up and splits and posture and core workouts and strength training. This is novel for me. The same training season I did last year is now teaching me something new.

A Brief Lesson in Humility

Years ago as a kid when I made lemonade, I loved squeezing the cut lemon halves with my hands. We had one of those lemon squeezers that look like two arms of medieval catapults joined with a hinge at the concave ends. The squeezer would get a lot of juice out, but not all of it. I enjoyed the challenge of pinching and pressing the seemingly dry lemon halves till I got a few more drops of juice out of them. Part of the enthusiasm was to demonstrate my 'strength' (such as it was), and part of it was pride at not having wasted any of the lovely fragrant lemon juice. I'd press and squeeze it till my forearms and palms hurt. As I would display the now completely dry (to my eyes) lemon halves to my mother, she would pick one up and give it a nonchalant squeeze. A brief lesson in humility would then drip down steadily into the glass.

I'm older now but I'm pretty sure I still can't defeat her in getting all of the lemon juice out with my hands. A lifetime's worth of grinding, chopping, squeezing, pressing, kneading in the kitchen can always defeat mechanical strength training in the gym.

Goal-setting and your body

Goal-setting is an efficient way to visualize and reach your targets. It seems to work in sales, academia, fundraising, test-taking and saving money.

It may however not work when it comes to your body. Or specifically, when it comes to reaching a body shape you desire.

Because the human body is far more complex than any of the examples above.

When you want to score well in a test, the equation is simple – set a goal of scoring so-and-so, study well, learn the concepts, practice taking the test, figure out where you might be going wrong and correct yourself.

In most cases, this will ensure you get the desired results. Sure, many other factors play a role – your health has to be good during prep and on test day, no major accidents on test day, need money for the test or buying supplies and study materials etc. But the other factors play a relatively minor role.

If you compare two test takers who have similar facilities available to them, the one that has a clear goal and studies better, scores better by and large.

But bodies, their health and fitness are affected by so many variables that it is impossible to account for all of them.

There’s a long long list of things that go into making a body healthy – amount and quality of food, exercise, mental health, financial health, social capital, genetics, how your body processes stress, your metabolism, family support, preexisting diseases, parental health and habits, your habits, childhood influences, your native culture (especially the position of food in that culture), your relationship to food and so on.

So when you set a goal of having a waist size so and so inches or having so many packs in your abs, there’s a ton of things you have to get right to reach that goal.

Sure, many people, reach their health goals. They probably do so because many of the above factors are already in their favor and they manage to get in control the few factors that aren’t with their goal setting.

On the other hand, I’m sure the numbers of those who don’t succeed is far far greater. Or we wouldn’t have billion dollar industries in nutritional supplements, fitness instruments, apps and programs, reality tv shows, and diet books.

So the take-away? Avoid setting body-shape and size related goals that are influenced by complex factors beyond your control.

Instead, set goals that are in your control, like waking up early or running a set distance every week or avoiding sugar for 21 days or lifting x amount of weight. Your body might respond the way you like or you may have to adjust your goals. 

Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and the 2008 global rice crisis

I’ve been catching up on old NPR podcasts during my runs. The podcasts are usually short and informative. My ears perked up when one of them mentioned India and had a quote from Government funded think tank official, P.K. Joshi, in the familiar thick Indian accent (familiar because I have it too!).

Apparently, a decision by the Government of India in 2007 helped trigger a global food crisis in 2008. The amazing part was that this crisis was triggered (and contained) not by any actual change in the production or supply of food, but by changes in the expectations and fears of people and governments the world over. And as usual by greed and incompetence. I do not recall reading much about this in the Indian media. So it was particularly interesting that a decision by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh (obviously not by them alone, but they are responsible being at the top of the decision-making hierarchy then) led to people in Philippines and West Africa going without food. If I recall correctly, Sonia Gandhi headed the National Advisory Council (NAC) which is behind the Food Security Act, among other legislation.

The podcast is from 2011 - NPR Planet Money podcast – How Fear Turned a Surplus into Scarcity. Following is a summary of the events taken from the podcast and other news sources.

The Government of India decided to create the Food Security Act under the Right to Food in 2007. This required more than 60 million tonnes of rice and wheat to be available in India. Wheat being expensive, the emphasis was on making more rice available since India had plenty of it.

“To make sure there was plenty of cheap rice on hand, Indian officials made it illegal for most Indian rice to leave the country. In October2007, they blocked exports of all non-Basmati rice.” 

India was the second largest of rice globally at the time. This sudden anticipated reduction in supply led to a dramatic rise in prices (20% overnight in some cases), limiting rice exports in other countries like Egypt, Vietnam and hoarding in countries like Philippines.

“Early in 2008, Egypt, Pakistan and Vietnam all started limiting the amount of rice that they would export. Government officials in Thailand, the world's leading rice exporter, started talking about setting up a cartel of rice exporters, similar to OPEC.”

“During the first four months of 2008, the price of a ton of rice on the world market went from $300 to $1,200.”

Poor people who couldn’t afford the high prices had to reduce their consumption of rice. I suppose it would be hard to determine and quantify whether any deaths occurred due to this artificial crisis.

The crisis was eventually solved by getting Japan to announce that they will sell some of their unwanted rice to Philippines. I do not know if the sale actually went through but apparently the announcement itself was enough to calm down prices.

In this narration, the American economists emerge, unsurprisingly, as the heroes who rescued the world from the crisis. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other factors at play.

Listen to the podcast for more interesting nuggets on this story; especially on how an American economist tried to get himself heard by GoI officials… “you try to get a word through channels…try to get key players in the Indian government that a ban is going to be very very difficult for the world…”. I wonder who these key players were. Perhaps one of them was this guy. 

Knowing someone

We started getting comfortable talking with each other. Talking with, not to. Never met though. This makes it hard to know in that gut instinct kind of way whether you really want to be with a person. The usual 'forever' bit at the end of the previous sentence adds a whole lot of pressure. So I didn't put it there, but it's obviously on my mind.

It's easy to fall in love. Even easier when you inevitably, and often unknowingly, make up a fictionalized version of the person you're talking with from a distance. This version is perfect in that imperfect way - we endow them with the qualities and flaws we are comfortable with. But there's so much more to a person.

I don't know what she looks like sitting by the window reading when it's raining outside. She doesn't know what I smell like after I'm back from a run but before I shower. I don't know if she smiles while talking on the phone or yawns loudly or frowns when concentrating. She doesn't know if I slouch too much or how enthusiastic I can get for some things or how slowly I type. Will she want to walk that small distance instead of driving or will it be too hot for her? Will her love diminish if I make much less money than her friends or maybe if I'm not as sophisticated as them?

I don't know if she likes being teased in front of others or how she looks just after waking up in the morning. Will she scowl at me checking email first thing in the morning or that I dip my toast in the cup of tea? And when she tells me something, will she be patient when I don't understand whether she wants me to just listen or reply with something constructive? Does she get absorbed in a movie like I do or is she bursting to comment on what  she just saw? Will she talk to me when she doesn't like something about us or will she let it build up to an un-returnable point of frustration? Will she find it corny if I tell her everyday how much she means to me or will she want to witness it by my actions?

Do I need to know all these answers before taking her hands in mine?

You mean I'm paying money to read free stuff?

A reductionist and selfish (?) view below but bear with me for a moment.

I read a lot online. It could be work-related, for studies, for learning something new. But the most common and ambiguous category of stuff I read is anything that is 'interesting' to me. This could be in the domains of current affairs, news, politics, religion, movements, technological advances, entertainment, psychology and many more. Do I learn something new through this? Sure. But for the most part this new learned entity is 'information'. I'm well-informed thanks to my reading. It doesn't imply I'm growing as a person because of it.

Indulging in this 'interesting' category also costs me a lot of money, I think.

How? I'm spending time on this reading business. Over a year, an average of an hour a day spent reading translates to 350+ hours. And this is a conservative estimate, also excluding additional time spent thinking about the stuff, talking about it, etc. That's close to two months of a full-time job. Instead, what if I had used at least some part of this time for learning a new skill or just earning money in a different way. Maybe I'd have finished reading 'The Intelligent Investor' in the past one year and started investing. Or performed freelancing tasks. Or set up a little business. Or monetized this blog.

Instead, my time and attention is going to an army of online writers and journalists. Since how much an article is read and shared, how many views and clicks it garnered is probably the primary metric for their paycheck and them keeping the job, I think I've been contributing to their (economic) bottom-line (I won't go into how well or poorly this breed is paid). So every time I read such an article, in a way I transfer some of my money to them. In this context, hate-reading would be especially painful. Why pay money to someone you dislike!

Suddenly, that urge to read about the latest political scandal or a supposedly incredible thing someone somewhere in the world did is dissipating.

Sure, there could be many non-tangible benefits of such reading. What I have to decide though is whether the cost is worth it. I don't think it is.

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.