Who I am, What I do

The second part is definitely the easier one to answer. It is after all what I have been chasing all along. It is perfectly laid out in a series of steps and I can take all the time in the world to explain even the tiny intricacies of it. The first part though is what has kept me at a blinking cursor for a while now

Well,of course there are ways to go about it. I was an INTP a while ago and have recently made a shift towards being an INFP. The MBTI evaluation tells me I am sensing better as well (opposed to being almost a 100% intuitive earlier). There are some other ways of evaluating a personality. A 5 point system claims to work better than an MBTI

Does this mere tagging though help me understand the choices I make day in and day out? Sometimes those choices are so quick that I make them and then realise there was a choice to make in the first place. Am I what I am because of choice? Or is it because I don’t know any other way of being?

Are we as individuals aware of the multitude of personality types out there? How fun a world would it be if we could switch our personalities around for maybe a couple of days, see how it works and make a decision

We can choose to be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or what not . You have a certain exploratory window which gives you flexibility until you arrive upon a choice. If you are able to make that specific choice there is a certain direction to it which helps you identify the skill-sets you need to develop

Can the answer to who I am be as defined? 

If Walls could speak...

Let it be the caves the pre-historic men lived in which were audience to his urge to express himself in the form of art whilst he was battling the brutality of life in its crudest form or the walls of all the great forts that stood in defense to protect its populace from the wrath of the greedy and power-hungry kings of old, or the walls that envelope you every day, all have stood witness and learnt much about the human nature.

Sadly, these walls can only be spectators. If the gift of speech is ever bestowed upon them they would speak haughtily of their immense wealth of knowledge in the ways of mankind. They would speak in awe of the masters who had displayed within their confines the immense potential a human being is capable of, who performed miracles they hitherto had unheard of. About people who had transformed the world around them with their zeal and brilliance. But, such wonder they would say is masked by a much darker side of the same human character, warning against how low and despicable it could be and about how quickly such poison spreads in its environment, afflicting all that stand in its path leaving such marks on them that are never purged. They would recall the countless times they had regretted their inability to communicate which had disallowed them from reaching out and consoling their masters when they were all alone and in despair, of not being able to use their wisdom to help their loved ones understand themselves and the world around them better. About how they hated their very existence at such points of time, wishing they had the freedom to choose that could prevent them from having to helplessly witness such agony.

Alas, these selfless friends of mankind silently linger on, ever showering their love on all that happen to ask of them for shelter.

Despair!

I am lately completely consumed by the process of trying to understand my own self and the world around me. This has led me to develop a very basic idea. There are in existence two worlds and not one as we speak of. One is the real physical world out there in existence. The other one which is so seemingly real is the one which exists virtually inside our own selves. A world that is full of our views, experiences, prejudices, judgments, emotions, ideologies and what not.This inner world is deeply personal to us which determines our actions and our thought processes. We slowly expand the horizons of this inner world with our everyday lives and slowly keep reshaping and trying to maintain a consonance with the real one. Lets call this inner world "Our World" and the real one "The World".

All along from childhood on we have been introduced to ideas suggesting of our higher existence, about our need to have a meaning to life. All religions and various ideologies also seem bent to this purpose to show man what is expected of him and to guide him towards a life that is supposedly meaningful. Most people live their life in consonance with the ideology they find the most acceptable to try and lead a fulfilling life.

But, aren't all these ideologies and religions things of our creation. These are what exist in "Our World" and not in "The World". Isn't all this an attempt to make the virtual "Our World" seem greater than the real "The World" and to take life away from any kind of truth? Why should life carry any meaning at all? Maybe we are just trying to give meaning to something that inherently has no meaning to itself. A surely despairing thought which maybe is true.

A Beautiful Mind

Today as was passing by a friend’s room at my hostel, he happened to be watching the movie “A Beautiful Mind”. This one I had seen quite a long time back and had good memories of it, so I sat down to watch it again. As the movie passed into the phase where John Nash starts getting excessively paranoid and needs medical help, I couldn’t help but start thinking of the way his wife felt being through the whole process of his recovery. The question that I was constantly asking myself was what were this woman’s dreams? What did she want to be in life?

The movie completely revolves around how John Nash comes to terms with his delusions and ultimately wins the coveted Nobel Prize. But, the process completely derails the life of his wife who needs to constantly give him strength and courage to be able to face his problems. What did the woman have to sacrifice in her life? She might not have reached the Nobel Prize ceremony otherwise, but did that make her happier than having to give up the dreams of her life that she had as a younger person?

Crazy Theories!

Have you ever been troubled about the fact that even after putting in a very good effort you do not enjoy the success you wish for? A lot of factors seem to have come in which were not considered earlier. Some would condemn that to a yet inexplicable factor called luck, while some would lay the responsibility on themselves and rue the fact that their effort might not have been enough. These two styles of interpretation are in line with the classical argument about the development of a person. One line of thought suggests that the environment is all that shapes a personality while another professes that the personality is hard coded into one's genes and is completely independent of the influence of the environment. Well,the most acceptable opinion for this argument has been midway which says though some features are hard coded in the genes, the environment does have a significant influence on the other aspects of the personality with no agreed weights assigned to the contributing factors. On similar lines, if we assume that a person's effort and his environment both end up contributing to his failure or success, then can a framework be developed to ascertain which factor has contributed most? We do have theories that can predict things as random as turbulence in an airflow. Can such phenomenon also be modeled then?

Most people who have seen the movie "The curious case of Benjamin Button" would remember the representation of the theory of unintended consequences, leading to an accident involving the female lead. Similarly in today's globalized world, we have seen the actions of the finance sector causing distress to a huge number of people, most of whom were not even remotely related to that sector. If we attempt to generalize such effects, one could say that every action committed by any living being, in any corner of the world would have an effect on your life, with the magnitude of the effect decided by say the remoteness of the person to your activities. Now to ascertain the success or failure of an event, one would need to add up all the components brought in by the actions of the entire world population with the component of the individual's own effort . Such a conceptualization indicates that the result of our actions is not completely in our own hands and seems to reinstate the Gita Updesh. If it is so, then why are some individuals consistently more successful?

One could say such people work harder, have better capabilities and so on. But one trait that definitely differentiates such people would be adaptability. The ability to dynamically respond to changes in the environment. This one particular dynamic trait, holds the potential to negate the effects of the environment and help the person be more capable of effecting the desired outcomes. This trait differentiates the best, from the rest!

Finally, my very own blog!

After musing over the idea of starting a blog of my own for a whole of two years, the day has finally dawned when I would be setting foot in this already densely crowded world of blogs, after successfully finding a topic about which I am sufficiently convinced that I have ample original thoughts that could make people take the pain to click a link or enter a web address and read through the whole of it (and yes, I would certainly expect the people who have been able to last through this ordeal to comment on it as well) So here we go!

Rational or Irrational?

Do we entirely understand the reason behind everything we do? I am one who certainly thinks otherwise. Not all the decisions we make in life are entirely reasoned out. A hell lot of them are impulsive. How many people can precisely explain why they happen to like a particular person the way they do? Rather than a few vague guesses on the possible reasons I wouldn’t really believe a lot of people can really justify their rationality in such decisions. What would you say of it? That the human mind in such situations is acting irrationally? Or is it that we do not completely understand our own selves?

Well, when one says he has made a decision impulsively it more often than not doesn’t mean he has tossed a coin and let that outcome decide. It rather means he is following his intuition rather than sitting down and reasoning out for a decision. What is intuition and how and why did this mysterious thing called intuition develop in us?

Every incident of our life, every second that we have lived leaves certain impressions on our character and it shapes us into what we are, like a mason who skillfully crafts a piece of nothing into an ornate sculpture. In this process we form our views, our opinions without in most cases understanding which incident lead to us change in which particular way. And this is how our intuition is formed, which forms a basis for many of the decisions which we take up later on. Would then it be irrational to follow such a systematically formed framework? There is a no digital yes or a no to such a question. It would rather depend on whether the kind of experience you have had equips you to deal with the situation at hand. If it is such a case, then there is nothing better than blindly following intuition as no amount of reasoning can measure up to be better than this extensive framework that your brain has developed unknown to your conscious self.

Now, let us get back to the question that was initially raised? Do we completely understand our actions? When one reasons out, comes to a conclusion and then takes a decision, definitely yes. But, some of the decisions your intuition strongly prompts might not be justifiable at that particular moment, where your reasoning might be suggesting otherwise. Only later on, when the implications of that decision have come forth, might you be able to comprehend the reasons what made you take such a decision that was seemingly so irrational but turned out to be right, or in some cases you might never end up knowing the reasons why a particular decision was right.