Day 73 : To Be or Not To Be

I am at a very tricky position in life right now. Not entirely sure which way to choose. There are two paths in front of me. Both very good and both exciting. Both may even lead to a relatively awesome outcome. But one is giving it to be easy, while other may/may not be as easy. One is going to a scenic route to paradise; another is going to be a rather drab rocky route there. Both check off some or the other feature that I am looking for. Both are not a hundred percent, both are close. They both have their own virtues, both have their own poisons.

The main thing that scares is this one decision is going to decide the next dozen years of my life. And we are not that equipped to take that sort of decision. If it was your life, I'd have been the best advisor you can hope for. Objective, resourceful and creative. But now that I have a personal stake at the outcome of this one decision. This really does not seem that easy to do. Darn the pressure. I am thinking too much I suppose. I have in past just tossed a coin and decided on things. Left it to luck. But most of those decisions have been inconsequential of course. Their outcome does not show up on your obituary or on the headstone - "Here lies Prem, who chose to have chocolate ice-cream instead of vanilla on August 22, 2015."

I blame this on the internet. It has virtually rendered us handicapped by not letting us make decisions for ourselves. There is Yahoo Answers, Quora, Twitter, StackExchange, WikiHow and a dozen other sites where we post up a question to complete strangers and they bring out their suggestions and solution, however relevant, practical and crazy they may be. And honestly that is a scary world. Giving a complete stranger on the internet, like someone with a handle crzylegz918, the reins of your life is a little haunting. You cannot make crucial decisions on life based on what some guy says online, he could very well be some loner guy sitting on an ancient IBM in his mamma's basement.

We've all become too soft in the taking personal decisions field. We let things happen to us that take a stand and decide things for ourselves. It is a daunting challenge. A challenge at times everybody has to face in life. And hopefully you'd take the right one. Only time can tell...

Day 72 : Social Media Scare

Like almost every millennial out there, I also tend to lean towards the liberal sort of thinking - the usual civil and amenable principles of equality for all, pro-choice, anti-violence and such. I don't necessarily get into a deep debate over it with everyone. Nor do I post what I feel about every darn thing to happen all over the world. I have people like that on my Facebook; I cringe at the sight of their lofty phrases and holier-than-thou statements about racism, fascisms, sexism and all the other 'isms. I really don't get how you posting a scathing comment on a 9gag article or a deep righteous status update about the malnutrition in an African country are going to solve anything of their problems.

The thing that baffles me the most is the click-bait titles of some of the articles shared on social media. The culprits of this crime are mostly the usual suspects of the internet - ScoopWhoop, Cracked, CNN, FoxNews, and AskMen etc. Their crime is that they bombard your feed with so much negative and unnecessarily ghastly articles that your brain is in advertently compelled to absorb all the negative news and bad vibes into your life and in the end you start getting more and more bugged about the life around you.

We are all very much co-dependent in nature. We assume that we won't be that affected by a village getting ransacked in South America. But that registers inside of you. We assume that some wild carnivore gets poached in Africa doesn't affect your daily life. But it really does. You see whenever you see or know of something vile or inhumane happening around you. Some part of your humanity stands up and takes notice. I am not a scientist; I wouldn't what to name or define this feeling. But we have a huge capacity to empathize with other human beings. When you see Jim Carey getting kicked repeatedly in the nards, you involuntarily cross your legs and feel a tiny weird sensation that you'd been kicked down there.

A couple of weeks back there was a video doing the rounds all over the Net. A rather ghastly one. A scorned lover in some part of Asia goes to a clothing store where his ex-girl works. Gets into a heated argument with her. Then the guy gets a knife from under his belt strap and starts stabbing the woman. There is screaming and yelling by the customers who were shopping around them. They all run in the other direction, trying the get as much distance as possible from this crazed man with a knife. He goes on stabbing; the woman is now on the floor thrashing about in vain. Some men come into the aisle and start yelling at him. He stands up and starts to brandish his knife around at them shouting unintelligibly. He sees that he is now surrounded by people, gives up and takes the blade to his throat and slits it ear to ear. He falls to the ground in a heap, blood pouring from his open throat.

Now. Could you please explain to me what can possibly be the reason that you and I had to go witness all of that? What are we possibly gaining by this sort of information being bombarded on us?

The world is a strange devious place with many things to scare and disappoint you. Is there a need to add to it by clicking 'share' to such stuff?

I have seen that video, and I cannot shred it out of my mind anymore. It is like Daniel Pearl all over again.

Day 71 : Having a Good Time!

Sometimes there comes a day when you feel like things are just a bit to weird. Well weirder that usual at least. Most of our time we spend walking around like a tin soldier. We only go to bed at night to key back again, only to wake up the next day and repeat the same BS all over again. Our days become inexplicably merged together. All of it goes by so fast, and of so little consequence that soon begin to wonder if the last year did happen at all. Or did the universe just skip a few months and the people in it are just in on the prank. Everyone is just playing a trick on you. Or maybe just soon you will wake up one day an all of this will be just a half-remembered dream.

There are times when some guy comes up to me and says, 'remember that we did that thing', and I want to bash his stupid face in. Because I do not remember the first thing of what he is saying. And what sucks more is when the story he is describing is such a laugh riot, and you did play a part in it. And by the looks of it, you would've really enjoyed it a lot. But heck if you remember even bit of any of it. This sucks. You are always complaining that you seem to be having a very monotonous life and nothing of any excitement has been happening anymore. Then you begin to realize that things do happen. You really do not change. People around you do not really change. The way you react with them, do not really change. What mostly happens is that the good times do not register as often into your brain as it used to earlier.

You see, as you progress with your life your expectation and definition of what 'having a good time' means gets blown way out of proportion. You think having a good time means, getting wasted on the deck of a cruise ship with pretty girls and blue ocean all around you. How often does that happen anyway? Not all of can be Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street. And also the truth is you don't really need to own a 100K yacht to enjoy yourself. At least you never really needed them in the past did you? You always had a rowdy ol' time with your friends and colleagues. What has changed? Have you become boring now? Don't people include you in their funcapades anymore?

Not true. As far you know you are not missing out on any exciting nights happening around you. Maybe you are just getting old, and so are the people around you. Maybe what people you know do for having fun has changed as well. Maybe getting wasted is not a big priority for them anymore. And anyways, you never got high on anything earlier either did you, so why should it matter now? Even now you can get people to enjoy themselves, go out of their way to feel the moment. And isn't what having a good time is all about. To actually stop the constant monologue going on inside your head, and see/hear/feel of whatever you are doing or wherever you are doing it. Really, just noticing your life at any instance of time makes it memorable.

Make memories. It is much cheaper to do than you'd think.

Day 70 : Who are you?

Most of the time when someone comes up to a stranger and asks who he/she was; the usual reply is that the person is an accountant, banker, journalist, engineer or something. Is that what we all are? Is that how we see ourselves? When come to think of our own existence do we all define this life of ours by what we do?

Maybe that's kind of obvious, maybe that would be how everyone'd define their lives. Though I think that is only because we are all now so habitual to taking the easy way out. We really hate raking our brains for anything these days. Any thought or feeling that cannot be tweeted out in 140 characters is not worth the effort. After all what do we really do in this day and age just for the sake of enjoying it and not for getting the maximum likes and re-tweets in social media?

Yes. The easiest answer to "Who am I?" is your job. That thing that you do to earn your living. And never really thought much of in the first place.

We all hate being put on the spot. Having to think of an answer to a question that can be so ambiguous and ambitious at the same time, is a big responsibility for our timid brains. It clearly is not equip to handle such sort of heavy digging. And even if we do chisel out a seemingly perfect answer for the question, who is to say that would be the end of it. Any conversation can go any which way based on this one question.

The social media sites have also caught on with this dilemma I suppose. Everyone wants to know "What's happening?" or "What's on your mind?" or "Tell me about yourself" We are all so constantly expected to able to churn out smart charming witty lines that soon we begin to filter and measure out everything that we say and do. And that seeps into our thought process. I don't think any of us really have had and original, personal idea in ages. What we think, and what we perceive of the world around is simply force-fed to us by the System. Yes, that does sound very Mr Robot-ish. But then, isn't that the truth?

I'd like for us to really change the way we think, act, and carry ourselves. We really need to have a personality that is of ourselves, and not a strange mixture of the people we admire or the see in the many screens of our devices. We do have a persona or character. Now that must have been buried under all the layers of BS we carry around each day, but trust me it is there. All we have to do is just really roll up our sleeves and go out have experiences. The more see, and do, and feel the more we learn about ourselves than anything or anyone else.

No one wants to know your job titles, except if you're looking for a job. Next time when someone asks, "who are you?" for Pete’s sake, just tell them your name and say that you read or fart or something.

FSociety.