The Pretenders....

Well, I've really hated this word and still never seemed to understand its true meaning... Till now that is...

Well,let's start off with the dictionary meaning of 'pretence' or 'pretense'(both are correct!)

pretence: The act of holding out, or offering, to others something false or feigned; presentation of what is deceptive or hypocritical; deception by showing what is unreal and concealing what is real; false show; simulation; as, pretense of illness; under pretense of patriotism; on pretense of revenging Caesar's death.

Now,I'm pretty sure that you've got a person in mind when you read the description above.... Let's try to do a character sketch of this person...

Start off by answering these questions....

• What acts can you remember that make you think of this person as a 'pretender'?
• Were those acts done to you and hence you've been offended?
• Or were they done to someone you know (either close or distant)?

And lastly,ask yourself..(and your self only!) Was it really apt to give him/her that tag or did I give in to anger or contempt?


If you answered 'Yes' to the last question, read on.... If you answered 'No'....please do read on...

We humans hardly have a clue to most of the things we do in life... We bask in the glory of being the most intelligible creatures on this planet and yet, commit blunders each day that bring shame to our sensibilities. That important task you missed, that interview answer that could've been answered better,that single gesture of gratitude that could've been shown,that exam that you could have studied for(!)........

What I'm trying to arrive at is that being human we're bound to make mistakes....This blog in its entirety should be named as "rememberyouarehuman.blogspot.com".. That has been my attempt at writing this blog....Why do we bother pointing fingers at others unclean images when we're no picture of divinity ourselves? No one, I mean.... NO ONE has the right to look down upon the acts of a person you dislike for a variety of reasons as being acts of pretence or falsehood...!

Few lines after I started this blog,I wanted to stop...Delete it or redo it some other day... But I remembered my true nature... It is obvious that I,like all humans,place myself on a pedestal of righteousness (whether you admit it or not!)... Standing on this pedestal it's quite easy for me to slot people as 'Right' and 'wrong', as 'True' and 'Pretence' and so on....It is a part of our sub-conscious to do this....

Recall all the events when you made a rash decision about a human and regretted it later... yeah...rings a loud bell doesn't it....? We do it without knowing abt it, without thinking abt it, hell...without even wanting to do it!!


NOTE :: I've reserved this blog for a few hand picked friends for the simple reason that my thoughts should not be misconstrued to be something that they are not.. I'm not trying to be a philosopher or a psychologist or a psychiatrist.... I'm just expressing my thoughts... I'd like you to read them as you'd read any article unbiased by the fact about the author.. Any feedback, positive or negative is welcome... I mean that..

Hoping to get some input on the posts from you guys soon... I need to know if this is a common thought pattern or is it just things my mind is concocting... Thanks for reading...

Finding solutions...

Fights among friends and wars among bitter-foes are as common as oxygen in air. People fight all the time,and more often than not,for reasons that they don't seem to remember for long! So is there any sense in trying to solve this regular occurrence? Why do people try and solve conflicts between 2 common friends?

Well,starting out with the concept of a fight...Well,I guess fight's too strong a word to use,dispute is more like it(but longer!!)...Anyways these disputes occur for various reasons- misunderstanding, lack of communication, unsupportive acts, seemingly disloyal acts,changing affiliations,an angry act that triggers off a a sequence of other catastrophic events in the personal lives of the people concerned. I think I've covered it all...At least I've covered all that I think is worth talking about...

Now,apart from these people that fight,there's a second class of people...The mediators...Needless to say,these people are common friends to both parties involved and hence try to keep their relationship at an amicable level.This involves a lot of work! Some direct,some indirect,some manipulative,some hurting, but the purpose of these actions is finally to resolve the dispute..come what may!

Everyone falls in the 'fighters' category,and a chosen few into the 'mediator' category.Which makes it all the more difficult for others to see why these mediators even want to resolve a fight? I'm sure you've wondered at some time or the other why people intervene in fights between two people? Isn't it their private matter?

I'm happy for people who think this way...because they're wrong!

For a stranger to intervene in a dispute is indeed suspicious,but when a friend does this,there is nothing 'private' about it. The relation between the fighters goes to a large extent in determining their relations with other friends. And this is crucial to a mediator as he wants to make sure that everyone here is kept happy and misunderstanding is kept at bay.

So is there always a fair resolution of conflict? Do all parties involved always find a solution that they will all agree upon? Nope....Always? NO.. When a mediator gets to see both points of view,he may find one view more appealing/true
(whatever the case may be) than the other... This maybe because he is biased towards a certain close friend or feels that one is more 'moral' than the other...What I'm trying to arrive at is that,sometimes a fair solution is not possible.. But that's where the two fighters must pitch in!

One may have to make a bigger compromise than another in a fight.Funny thing is....that each fighter believes he/she made the bigger compromise.. So who's right? Who needs to apologise first? Who was wrong initially? Who made the bigger compromise? Who needs to be given more respect?

Does it even matter?? Goddammit...Finish the fight..Deal with it..Forget reasons and blame games and other trivial things. IF you think there's anything worth keeping the other party as a friend (think impartially here!),then do it...
Else,forget all of this and find some other friend. Period.

Keep the ego aside for a while and think about the necessity of this friendship to both you and the other party. You don't have to go the whole way,but you must cover some distance too!

Before I end this post,I'd like to leave you with this thought....
"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step!"

Do it...

Loyalty....Unraveled...

Nowadays,the word 'Loyalty' is enough to have me in splits... Why? Well,that's why this post...

What is loyalty? Literally, it may be defined as "the act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to something or someone..". I suppose that can be understood as binding yourself to a friend, a job, your love, your spouse..and so on.

True loyalty is a rare commodity nowadays...Even those who stake claim to be completely loyal can misinterpret folly as loyalty..... Numerous examples can be cited where a simple act of loyal behavior has brought down many a man to his knees.

By default,humans want to be loyal..... A lot has been said about the disloyal intentions of a philandering husband,but nevertheless,people want to be loyal. Admit it or not,you may have questioned yourself about it quite often as well....If not, ask yourself now, "Am I loyal?"," Do I like being loyal to people?" More often than not, "Yes" rings clear in the head...

And yet,day after day,month after month,year after year...people do question your loyalty! A minor incident where you chose another side...(which at that point seemed correct),...a small joke that you played on a friend in the presence of other 'friends' that upset him/her,...a question or a piece of information that wasn't passed on,..a smile that wasn't given,...a secret that wasn't shared,.. a task that was due but wasn't done....PHEW!!

Now,if you were nodding to some of those instances,you've definitely questioned your friends opinion on your loyalty...Or you've questioned your own opinion of a friends loyalty.....

So why do we pretend? Why is it that every act of 'disloyalty' gets magnified when someone else has done it? Why do we seek our relations to have loyalty when it is questionably a virtue present in us?

People may bring in the arguments of a married couple where either the husband or the wife expects loyalty from the spouse and is justified.... My justification (whatever it may be) would be akin to stepping on thin ice... If I were to step aside from this article and comment on this,then yes,I firmly believe Loyalty is a must-have in a marriage.... A roving eye can be tolerated, but certainly not a philandering spouse...

But this post wasn't to bring attention to the beautiful comedy of errors that a marriage is...But instead,this was to elaborate loyalty in less demanding but by no means less important relations like friendship,like love....

So have I done that? I guess not... I started this as a post for my thoughts on what I'd been seeing in the recent past in my own relationships...But suddenly, the importance of this post seems lost... Why am I cribbing about loyalty when the contents of this post were to highlight the shallowness of the very word?!

I learnt my lesson during this post... I cannot expect people to do unto me what I cannot do unto them as well....And even if I exhibit such extraordinary levels of loyalty expected from me, I'm bound to upset one person or the other....So why pretend? Nope... No more to expect from the relationships that I sought to give me their all...No more fights on the flawed idealism that loyalty is...

(But as human as I am, I'm aware of how short term my emotional memory is... he he...)

I recall one quote that makes my enlightenment complete....“People who love only once in their lives are. . . shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.”

Think about it....

It's all in the mood...

Hmmm....A very wise man once said-"A man is defined by the frequency of variation of his moods and the degree of severity in terms of people affected by these moods...."
(How very true... The saying and the wise man both are very dear to me... )

That apart,I seem to be a living example of the highest degrees of mood swings ever thought possible... And why's that? Beats me.... I've always tried to come up with a logical, rational even psychological explanation to mood swings...

Here's what I could gather from what I've read.... The sudden drop and rise in hormonal levels cause mood swings that occur at certain phases in life (puberty or mid-life)...This was the logical,scientific explanation to mood swings...

But personally,I liked the psychological one... The 5 senses of our body are constantly providing us with inputs... And when you're thinking about something,one of these inputs may derail your train of thought. Now,people may argue that they don't even think about something relevant to the current job being performed... But that's the beauty of it...


These thoughts occur so quickly that it is not possible to pin-point to one input that does the unnecessary. But your mood swings can be controlled and I'm again the living testament to this... Over time,with good amount of observation and reasoning,you can switch off derailing inputs... How? Let me explain...

Let's take a scenario (I love these too much)...You're heading to college in the morning...
En route there,you start to think about a friend...Just from something you recalled or something you saw happening or some other relevant person you saw a little while ago... As you start thinking, something happens....This 'something' is what determines your mood...

Seratonin...Major culprit..This is the hormone that regulates your mood...A low level of this in the body can cause a bad mood...A good level keeps your spirits high... This is physiological...And hence can be easily controlled... Exercise is something that has always brought my seratonin levels up... Other factors that help are- carbohydrate or sugar intake or even good ol' sunlight...

Try to recall your physical condition the last time you had a mood swing.... Hunger or laziness are the possible physiological reasons... A fight or just unvented anger can be the psychological reasons.... Or alternately,you're just at a bad juncture in life...Like someone entering his teens or someone entering mid-life....

I'd be a moron if I were to single these out as the only reasons that cause mood swings... But they are the MAJOR reasons... But as you have probably reasoned by now,all these 'major' factors can be controlled...

As I've come to realise, mood swings are not something that are beyond your control. Blinking, breathing....now these are involuntary... Not a mood swing...

More often than not, a mood swing can cause so much damage to a relationship... Be it your parents,friends,your spouse,your GF/BF.. And the cracks that once appear in a relationship at a weak moment can bring apart the strongest of people...

So please...Let us try to bring control into our lives and our relations... Let's control our MOOD..

The drill is simple-- Consciously observing any kind of mood change before it intensifies, and finding a major reason and then taking action to solve it!

Solve the reason,and you rid yourself of the bad mood...

Academics!!!

I never actually thought I'd be writing about this in my blog....ever! Come to think of it.. I hesitate even writing about academics...forget even giving a thought about doing well in it!

Academics...studies...the intended purpose of joining a college,of studying till now,of willing yourself to get up and go to college everyday... Nope..I love college..In fact,keeping inline with the Matrix philosophy of "Some rules can be bent,others can be broken",I've altered my perception of college to such an extent that I forgot it has anything to do with academics....!!

Let's take a scenario(I love these....)....A typical student...well not so typical..! A student who's been on top almost all of his school life moves to a PU college...From day 1 all he intends to do is do well here...It's a prestigious college,he's enthusiastic about his future from this day on....Then it happens....FRIENDS... Now I'm not the kinda person that places blame on his friends for the lack of responsibility or factor X(as we'll call it)...But like it or not,your friends circle at your teens determines the kind of person you evolve into...

This student makes friends who're more or less around the average mark...They manage to get through the routines of college exams,tests,labs effortlessly...Thanks to their good schooling... But as time passes on they seem to lose the edge,all of them....well..almost all.. And caught in this draft,our main protagonist loses his zeal too.... Inspite of all this, all of them manage to do considerably well in PU as well,due to some last minute desire to do justice to the educational system.

Now,they get into different colleges....Most of them get into engineering...Although our character didn't wanna end up in engineering,he follows the herd and the anticipations,dreams,and other heavy stuff that his parents expect him to fulfill.

This is where it gets interesting,once again he decides that this is a new start and that he'll make the most of it... He attends classes,takes down notes, and works hard....Does well in the first year too...But fate finds him and again..and this time it bites him hard...He falls to a pit this time... He makes every possible effort to stay on course...but his efforts are like the struggles of a man stuck in quicksand....With every move,he sinks deeper and deeper...

And now,there's a stage where he's given up trying...He's stopped struggling...He's not going up or down...Stagnant...oblivious of the fact that the sand has dried up....!! Lying in wait of a miracle...for something drastic to come along and shake up his life...

But will this miracle ever happen?? Nope...We keep asking for miracles each day....But God sent us as miracles into this world...He made us suffer,he made us happy,he made us strong that we may face life,he made us weak that we may remember his name,he has tested us and given us the courage to go through these tests as well...

Are you one of these people? Looking for a miracle? Well, there's only one way you'll get a miracle....BE THE MIRACLE!!!

Change your life...It's yours...You can choose to live it well...to live as you want to...Priorities and necessities are different...Choose well..

Conflict of interest...

I think there are moments of brilliance in every man's life...Not phases..moments.. Why place such an emphasis you ask...? Well,firstly, ppl believe that they go through good and bad phases..and think that the ideas that occur during the good phases are brilliant...while the others are...well,average...

Let's consider a typical scenario... A boy just like u and me,has severe doubts about his real(not current) love interest. I mean,he knows the ones that stand out from the rest,it's just that he cannot pick one from this extended list!! yeah...like most "my-friends-dream" stories..you can guess who this boy is...!!

Lemme get to the point... everyday,he gets to look at the ppl that mean most to him...the ones of which one could make his life pure,at the beginning, and pure hell later on...! He keeps looking for signs...God's signs,friends signs,love signs,traffic,weather...and so on... But after a certain point of time,he feels dejected...when he doesn't receive any signs...

He looks deep into the eyes of the ones he holds dear...and each of them give him a sign week after week.. Some together in the same week, while not at all during some other times..He keeps thinking..."am i doing this right?", "is it right to love more than one?", "i mean,i haven't yet told her (read: them)..."...These are the average moments that I mentioned about earlier..

Now,let's get to the brilliant ones...These u don't have to analyse...They're in your face... The moments where everything around this gal and you seems to slow down (like an 80's slow motion typical Bollywood song), moments where you suddenly develop a tunnel vision (ppl,places,things..all these don't matter at this instant), moments where your desire to tell her abt your love exceeds your love for her itself... And this,of course happens with multiple gals... Why?? Beats me....!!

I've often wondered how ppl actually think of love as something that can be started from a one-sided thingy and then plan to turn it into a two-way love... In reality,persistence for pursuit of love is arguably a foolish thing. You will regret it years down the line... Why,oh why didn't I look for someone else?? why did I waste my time trying to 'woo' this gal when she was least interested in me? Why am i like this? How is it that ppl around me that are equally dumb/smart(as u may state it) have a gal in their arms and I don't?

These questions never seem to have a 4 point answer...I wish there was this blog somewhere that God secretly maintained that contained tips for ppl who have questions like this... but I simply love the human tendency to blab even such a secretive blog to others..Out of pity, for appraisal, or God-alone-knows what other reasons...

Well,as I end this I still think of what could be the answer that we seek? Why do we not know what we want? And once we do,why do we not know how to get it? And if we do get it, are we really happy? And if we are happy,who is there beside you to share it with? (Last question,I promise...) And if we do find someone to share this 'moment' with,will it last?

To be or not to be single...That is the question I think Shakespeare would be turning in his grave over...

A thought to chew on...

hmm....my first blog on my thoughts...This one's goin to be fun...

Now what is the first name that springs to your mind when I say.."Friendship!"?? so you have a name.. Now come to think of it,is this a person you've met recently or have had a long term friendship with? If I'm guessing right,it's been long term (long being a relative idea!!)

Have you ever wondered about the possibilities when this friend of yours might turn out to do something against you....NO! I'm not talking about the minor squabbles, fights that you may have had over something trivial (as I'd put it 'Worldly')..NO.. This is about the fights that have emerged from conflicts in your principles. I do not know how many reading this have ever had the good fortune of having a "Principle fight" with your friends...but for those that have,I've got just one thing to say.... "You're damn lucky!!".


No..I'm not out of my mind... It is such fights that have made people stronger...and admit it or not,it's what's made you stronger over the years too. Like controlled friction causes parts of a machine to harden over time,like persistent hunger,poverty hardens the true nature of men....... like constant failures drive the Indian cricket team to go all out to win(!!!).. The fights that you tend to whisk away as a mere fall-out will do you more good than harm, but that comes from the right conditioning.

A mind accustomed to giving in to pressure cannot make much progress up the learning graphs from his fights. It becomes so much of a routine to fail that you'd rather have people leave you down and alone than support you.

Then what kind of a person learns from a fight? A person that understands the value of the friends he intends to keep close for long... A person who realises that the best moments in life do not come from the trips that you've been to, the eateries that you may have frequented or the classes that you may have bunked with friends....
Nope....the best moments in life are when you're down and out, and there's no one to come to your help. As you lie on a virtual floor of ice somewhere,freezing your ass off...you will see a shimmer of light..You can call this whatever you want....Hope, Faith, Trust, Love and any more of these outdated vitruvian values. This light will help you on your feet, will help you warm that frozen ass and teach you to laugh it off....As the typical nature of humans goes,you will want to name it with a relation(as we do to all feelings that are going just fine by themselves).. You start to wonder-"is this a friend?", "Do I know this?...I mean I've felt this before...." and so on...


It takes a fair deal of introspection to realise that this light was from within....!! It was all you... There is this quote I read somewhere that rings in my head after a fight... "Self alone is the best friend of self"...but I guess that was for people like me....For others, here's a thought that I'd like to leave you with......

"A friend helps you to move, a real friend helps you to move a body"....

Think about it!

Subscribe

Subscribe My Feed

Subscribe My Feeds

• Subscribe to RSS Feed
• Add to My Yahoo
• With NewsGator
• With Bloglines
• Add to Netvibes
• Add to Google