The Purpose of Life: create your own meanings

I always prided myself over my philosophical bend of mind; I could muse about all these profound questions at a young age and try looking for solutions. However it soon became a problem when the flow of questions remained the same but the solutions stopped coming to me. However hard I thought, some questions were bigger than my tiny brain! As I delved into philosophy for the first time, I realized, neither Aristotle nor Socrates had answers so many times and it is the thoughts that change at the way how you perceive things and that, mostly you can create your custom made solutions, applicable solely to yourself.

That is how I solved my question of WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MY EXISTENCE?

I tried to answer it in the simplest form I can, because let’s admit, the answers to some of the most complicated questions could be the simplest ones. So for the above question, I simply drew the answer from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a simple psychology concept which explains how our first priority should be psychological needs which includes food, shelter, air, water, sleep, clothing and reproduction. The second is safety needs having health, employment and other resources under its wing, the next is the feelings of love and belonging followed by a rather complex component of self-esteem and then self-actualization of reaching ones potential. 

Spotting the basic needs and others after, I made the formula-

Life is all about sustaining you, living and creating.

Explanation:

Sustaining you

This is quite self-explanatory- get jobs at an appropriate age, irrespective of the fact whether it’s satisfying or not, if it isn’t as satisfactory, we have the other components to make up for it.

Living

The best living is when you are healthy, so first priority under living should be taking care of your health and then enjoying what life has to offer. Your sudden dance breakouts or bathroom singing can keep you covered in this department of living.

Creating

I strongly believe all of us are artists even if we do not have a visible exploitable skill. Some of us are naturally writers, poets, script writers or comedians, some create life and prove exemplary in parenting or some create some other kind of art but trust me, every action of human is closer to art than you think.

 

 

IS MEDIOCRITY THE CHANGE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR?

Have you been struggling lately to get things done on time? Does success feel far to reach? Is your need to be an ideal student or worker bringing your downfall? It is too often that we find ourselves in a rut of unproductivity, procrastination and low motivation. It’s difficult to comprehend such situation and get out of this mess.

Recently I was continuously failing as a student to do even an hour of study in a day, when I ideally wanted to devote my time to studies and be a bookworm. If you are working, it is not that uncommon to find a worker with an ideal vision of being a workaholic but not getting any work done. It stems from a very frequent pattern of behaviour: expectation of perfection.

After struggling to correct this behaviour, I went to my therapist for answers. After listening long to my predicament, she ironically declared that your need to be an ideal student is the reason to be a crappy student! The fact that I have sought nothing less than brilliance in my entire life, stooping to mediocrity is a big no-no! I would rather fail if I have to. But is being always brilliant at what I do, possible? It is easier to realize the answer than to accept it.

Anyone with more experience of life can easily state that the mediocre have always been more successful in the long run, at doing what the brilliant people does brilliantly. Then it obviously poses the question- is mediocrity more useful to get ahead in life? Can it be a way of life?

“For Krista O'Reilly Davi-Digui, who lives in Canada with her husband and three children, it is heartfelt.

"When I say I'm mediocre, I am," she says, posing the question in a recent blog, What if I am mediocre and choose to be at peace with that?

"I love to learn but I'm not the most brilliant person. I like to write but that doesn't mean I'm the greatest writer. I'm just kind of plain." Krista studied for an education degree, dropped out after suffering bouts of anxiety and depression, and is now a certified holistic nutritionist and "joyful living educator".

"The messages are always do more, be more, sacrifice sleep for productivity, bigger is better, rush, rush, rush," she says.

"It just destroys me. I feel like that isn't life and I don't want it and I can't even begin to keep up. So many of us just want to get off that hamster wheel and just breathe."

Approaching this issue more practically, it is easy to figure out that the more energy you burn at the present, the less energy will be left to burn in the future i.e. one could easily burn out fast and lose motivation and commitment towards their work.

While some have pursued hard work and dedication towards what they do and have become the outliers of our society, most are doing just okay! At every turn of an hour, a new article or quote shall be published to motivate us into being extraordinary but the stakes of submitting to it is high and risky.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review. In it he presents a five-tier model of human needs.

As shown above, he puts the nature’s priority list-food, water, warmth and rest, the basic ones, stability and safety after that, relationships and friends the next and the last two, prestige or accomplishment and reaching full potential respectively. Before seeking out the less basic needs, we need to have the security of livelihood in hand.

The Obsession with Perfection:

While some put the hard work with a vision in sight, some simply are driven by the need to be perfect in all spheres of life. This unhealthy pursuit can send one spiralling downwards if not rid of, at the right time. Mediocrity then will be a haven to discover!

Lies of the social media:

Social media exposes us to the highlight of the lives of people around us leading us to believe that this is the way life should be lived. It never captures the struggles or the low points in one’s life obliterating our ability to look at life more realistically.

More time to celebrate life:

Once the need for mediocrity is realized, one finds more time to appreciate the wrapped happiness in the little moments of life. One simply has more time to grow and have hobbies which take care of your physical as well as mental health.

Final thoughts:

If the going gets tough, it helps a lot to sit back, take a deep breath and embrace mediocrity. As my therapist says- “be flexible, be ordinary”.

 

 

Sheroes tie their hair- women and beauty

As the Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) fights to save the entire humanity, she picks up the tank to hurl it at Ares, she dodges each of the many attacks of the God of War, as she contains the thunder thrown by Ares with her bracelets, imagine if her thick long jet black hair comes upon her face at the most important moment of her attack, this shero will be reduced to a meagre stock of laughter and humiliation in front of the audience.

Thank God Harley Quinn had an extra hair tie which she offered to Black Canary to fight better in the scene where 4 savage girls were fighting numerous bad men in Birds of Prey. Even if I am not close to a battle field, in the battlefield of life, how can I not have at least a hair tie to tie my hair?

For their whole life, women had to deal with ‘The feminine beauty ideal’. It is "the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women's most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain"

I can’t even cross the road with my untied thick flowy hair, without obstructing my peripheral vision and to talk of going through life without tying my long hair is tedious and impractical!

Here’s the thing, sure a man is judged by his looks, but this list also contains intelligence, strength of character, heart etc. but when we praise a woman, it’s only in terms of her beauty. No matter how far we have come, our merit boils down to our beauty!

Remember the last time you went to a wedding reception, when manipulative aunties gossips about ‘his’ qualification and ‘her’ beauty?

I can’t put be in that wretched box! My abilities matter more than looks! It’s damn uncomfortable with this long hair flowing in the wind like a 90s heroine. So I tie it. Not to not look beautiful but to choose my ability over the requisite to look beautiful. I have my career to build, I have tons of books to read, I have a lot of information to gain and I don’t care if my youth and beauty runs out in this time. So am I shabby? Well I would take a detour from considering myself clumsy or shabby.

Feminine beauty ideals are deeply rooted beliefs in our culture, heavily influencing women of all sexual orientations from the start of time. The feminine beauty ideal can include female body shape, skin colour, several face features, height, bosom and ass varies from culture to culture. Several psychologists have confirmed that in willing to adhere to these pseudo beauty standards, women can develop body image issues, food disorders, depression, anxiety etc. from a very young age.

Besides the ability of a woman to adhere to these beauty standards can also influence her social status within her culture. In fact, in order to look more charming to their fellow men, altering physical beauty has been a norm for many years. In Burma, Padung girls from the age of about five years, have metal rings put around their necks. Additional rings are added to the girl's neck every two years. This practice is done to produce a giraffe-like effect in women. This practice is dying out, but these women would eventually carry up to 24 rings around their necks. A neck with many rings was considered the "ideal" image of physical beauty in this culture.

 In Europe, the corset has been used over time to create a tiny waistline. In Europe, a tiny waistline was considered "ideal" for beauty. A practice in China involved a girl's feet being bound at age six to create the "ideal" image of feet. The girl's feet were bound to become 1/3 the original size, which crippled the woman, but also gave her a very high social status and was much admired.

Additionally, in South Korea, known for its unrealistic beauty standards, women casually go for cosmetic surgery to alter their appearance according to the trending looks.

Such crises in women’s self-esteem remind me of W. B. Yeats, ‘For Anne Gregory’:

 Never shall a young man,

Thrown into despair

By those great honey-coloured

Ramparts at your ear,

Love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair …’

The speaker of this poem tells Anne that she is doomed to be loved for her yellow hair rather than for her charming personality or overall beauty: her hair is a sort of curse. Anne finds this prospect so terrible that she threatens to dye her hair, so it doesn’t possess its yellow allure any more.

Final thoughts:

We women are more than beautiful, we can be smart, intelligent, bold and successful, don’t judge us by the same standards. Next time, you meet me, I am not charming you by my beauty but my wit!

THE THEORY OF EVRYTHING

I am an ordinary literature student who is not even quite sure of the relevance of her words. But I wonder, about the endless possibilities of the Universe. I attempt to paint the colours of creation on my fancy.

In Standard 8, I was gifted the Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking by my brother. I have lived in fear of science for a long time but that didn't stop me from going through the book. I first read how it was established that the Earth was round. Skipping a few chapters, there was the concept of black hole explained. What hopeless it is, to suck the slightest source of light? And then I looked through the index and found the last lecture, 'The Theory of Everything'. As I swiftly turned the pages, building up in mind to know The Theory of Everything, I was almost upset at not having found one. Stephen Hawking says:

“Can there really be a unified theory of everything? Or are we just chasing a mirage? There seem to be three possibilities:

·       There really is a complete unified theory, which we will someday discover if we are smart enough.

·       There is no ultimate theory of the universe, just an infinite sequence of theories that describe the universe more and more accurately.

·       There is no theory of the universe. Events cannot be predicted beyond a certain extent but occur in a random and arbitrary manner.

But in that lecture, the second biggest question of my life after “what is the purpose of my existence", came to life-“what is the Theory of Everything?” What can it be? How is it formed? Is it in a series of complicated mathematical equations or a simple formula? What law of science can be that significant to govern the whole world, all at once? And then I heard a whisper through my mind. It's philosophical!(I know Stephen Hawking says philosophy is dead as it has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics). It might be a word, a phrase, a poem or a prose, a single unified theory, that explains everything about the universe which centuries of mankind hasn’t been able to ascertain. And that will be the complementary philosophical rail line of its other scientific rail line, which has to always go parallel, to run the vehicle of life. If there exists a law that governs everything in the Universe, there is a parallel of it, a philosophical counterpart (you cannot have ‘yin’ without ‘yang’). I think every mathematical law in the world has a parallel philosophical line of thought. For example, let's consider force= gravity * mass₁ * mass₂/ distance². Its philosophical counterpart is- more the distance, less the force. According to Newton’s Third Law of Motion, if body A exerts a force on body B, then B exerts a force of equal size and opposite direction on A. Mathematically, it can be written  as : F_AB = – F_BA, A philosophical counterpart being: every force has an opposite and equal reaction.

I moved ahead in time bearing that question in mind. Leaving engineering and science at the same time, I came on the side of Arts and Language. I joined English Literature as my Graduate course. The course got my juice of words flowing to write about this but not so much as to explain it more clearly than I can right now.

By now I think I was ready to grasp its answer, like catching a ball projected towards me. Alas! My hands were very small to just hold it at once. I didn't acquire the precise knowledge but just a view from the top.

This is how it goes: One day I was sitting on my terrace when it had rained quite a lot the previous night. There were water puddles everywhere. When we were small, we were told that we should never see the sun with bare or naked eyes. And like John Donne(poet) who says in his ‘The Sunne Rising’:

“Thy (Sun) beams, so reverend and strong

               Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,”

 I too laughed at the magnanimity of the sun when I easily captured its image, in the water, its reflection.  I could see it! I could capture it with my eyes with so much ease! I defied the big scary laws! I did it! Little did I know that a few weeks later I would realize how foolish I was to capture the Theory of Everything like I wished to capture the image of the sun in just a puddle! Because  perhaps, I or none of us, living can write it for you because it encompasses and is in Everything in the world, in books, in experience, in nature, in images, in interaction, in knowing someone, in loving someone...in Everything. And trying to know it in just one lifetime is like capturing the reflection of the sun and believing that you are as magnanimous as the universe itself!

 

 

The Tragic Fairy-tale: The Great Gatsby

 

The lavish mansion, a flamboyant Rolls Royce and a snazzy pink suit, what’s there about, not to love Gatsby? He should be the epitome of the American dream, the single most hopeful person who earned everything there is to earn in this world, wealth, love and respect. Coming from a poor family with parents as farmers, he built everything from scratch. There is nothing Gatsby hadn’t dreamed to pursue with his gift for hope. But the central purpose behind his arriviste was the pursuit of love. Love for daisy, a fresh beauty of the Jazz era, who bolted herself in Gatsby’s heart in her hometown Louisville and became the muse of Gatsby’s dreams and raison d’etre of Gatsby’s life.

Whatever he earned, the focus was only one- Daisy. He threw magnificent parties with practically no guest list every weekend so that one day Daisy walks through his door. He bought his mansion just across the bay from daisy’s home, where he could see a green light on her dock, symbol of all his yearning.

“He stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and …distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away…”

Set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age, in the decade of the 1920s, Nick Carraway, also a veteran of World War I, like Gatsby, narrates the story of Gatsby when he moves beside him.

My perspective might be a little different when I say it’s the story of clash of class, of virtue and artifice, of the real and the imaginary.

“Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace…they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing”

Gatsby imagined and hoped that by amassing such wealth, he can get entitled to deserve some beauty like Daisy. Daisy on the other hand, though claimed to have been in love with Gatsby, seemed to fall out with him when she realized Gatsby might have earned everything by unfair means and went back into the arms of a husband, with an aristocratic breeding, with no virtues visible except for the virtue of wealth, one who now didn’t really love Daisy and had a mistress as well. Poor Gatsby! His fairy-tale love is overshadowed by the abyss of this world’s artifice!

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….”

 

 

 

 

Book review: The Art of Happiness

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness”-the Dalai Lama

The ‘Art of Happiness’ is a book by the 14th Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, a psychiatrist who questioned the Dalai Lama with his topics covering a wide spectrum on the conduct of life.

I always had two conflicts in my mind- what is the purpose of life and what is essential in to live life. What I was seeking, sought me out through this book. Both these questions were answered without any delay, in the first line of the book itself that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. If you ever scrutinize the definition or concept of happiness provided by various spiritual institutes or in various holy books, the commonality of it all is that happiness is not dependent on any extrinsic factors but is to be created intrinsically.


Gradually with the teachings of the Dalai Lama and further important reflections of H.Cutler from the point of view of a psychiatrist, our perceptions are altered through this book.


Sources of happiness


The Dalai Lama expounds on the simplest sources of happiness in life which includes inculcating self-worth in our character, sense of gratitude and elimination of our tendency to compare every aspect of our life with others’.

Every individual ought to make a choice for pleasure or happiness and that shall itself lead the way to happiness in life.


Training the mind for happiness


The Dalai Lama emphasizes on kindness, warmth and compassion as fundamental character of an individual. Without cultivating those, happiness can be a far-fetched goal. Additionally, he asserts that empathy promotes health. He teaches us to identify and eliminate negative mental states like hatred, anger, intolerance because in reality, such negative states occur with our failure to achieve love and affection.


Hence we ought to reset your priorities in life with the ultimate aim- ‘happiness’


Relationship


The Dalai Lama clearly states that a relationship built primarily on sexual desire is like a house built on a foundation of ice; as soon as the ice melts, the building collapses. Watching romantic movies, we have learned to idealize love even with the harsh reality of love being complicated in front of us. We have to see the real picture, beyond the false representations of the ‘high’ with falling in love because such ‘high’ is just like the high induced by the drug; they will go away with time.


So in order to make a relationship succeed, we just need the true foundations of mutual respect, compassion and affection.


Suffering


There is an in-built instant aversion and intolerance to suffering in us. We would go to any length to avoid it but will not accept a simple reality that suffering and pain is the underlying state of our existence. In Buddha’s own public teachings, the first thing taught was the principle of the four noble truths, the first of which is the truth of suffering. We often face problems in life but not finding a solution to it and an incessant worry, rejection or re-enforcement of it creates more suffering and pain.


So embrace the impermanence of things because life is change, the more we hold on to what was, the more grotesque life becomes.


Conceptually, pain is important to warn of the danger that lies ahead and to be heard, it has to be unpleasant!


Bringing about change


Inner- discipline is the keyword to bring about any change in oneself. We should be able to establish new behaviour patterns which don’t happen overnight and takes years to develop. Coupled with realistic expectations and positive states of mind in response to any negative state of mind, change can be brought about. With introspection and a little common sense, we can easily find antidotes to any negativity in us. For example, sincere motivation can be an antidote to anxiety, honesty to oneself counteracts lack of self-confidence like love for hate and change is inevitable.


Overall the book provides such simple but beautiful insights to life. Though the author has rambled for many pages (about 350!) about such easy concepts that could be explained in a paragraph, but for people who won’t easily believe in what the author has to say, such substantiating can be beneficial. It’s quite an easy but a life changing read.


The finesse of the book is in how the Dalai Lama has simplified living life with the cultivation of most basic qualities like positivity and affection like a child. It efficiently breaks our notion that adulthood is difficult because being childlike helps to live our lives better.


It seems at the outset of the book that we will be diving into the Buddhist religious principles but reading the book, but you will not find any imposition of Buddhism but there seems to be an easy flow in throwing light about the fundamentals of living life.


I give it 4/5 stars!

Does Suceess Needs To Be Redefined?

Growing in this world of cutthroat competition, educated in a school with sky-high ambitions, I was built for success, I was bred to succeed. I was running in the race of success before I knew the meaning of success. My brain was hardwired to achieve. That was the sole meaning of life I could possibly comprehend.

Now, I am almost an adult, about to cross the threshold of my bubble of an existence. I was a dumb little kid, to accept all the norms. Norms that has not, for once, proved its significance to unmask the cloak of complication of life.


I thought I wanted to conquer it all but I started asking questions that really matter. I asked myself what I want. With a clear opinion in view that I want to be happy no matter what, I asked if conquering the whole world will quench my thirst for more and make me happy? I got an honest answer from my heart, a resounding emphatic no. But my brain is hard-wired to succeed! How do I conduct my life then?

"Success (n) 1. the achievement of an aim 2. the gaining of wealth or status" is how Oxford English Dictionary defines it. This is the norm. But I prefer customisation. There isn't a mass production of humans to work as 'hands' like the cloning of Stormtroopers in clone wars (Star Wars) but every individual is born with a set of unique qualities. It's not hard to acknowledge that. So if every individual is unique, shouldn't success be customised according to their needs and capabilities? Why does everyone have to run in the same race when what they want is different for all?


I, for once, want to customize the definition of success, something that I work hard for, achieve it and get my deserved haven of happiness. Earning a massive wealth or power is secondary when I won't be content in my heart. After almost 6 years of depression and 3 year of generalized anxiety disorder giving me enough panic attacks to jolt me into reality, I realized that being stressed in studies or career can do me no good but deteriorate my mental health. So I sought out my passion, passion for literature. My definition of success is still an outline but it definitely involves a nourishment of soul with a more or less constant peace in my mind.


What's your definition of success?