Live & Let Live

A famous tomb stone screams out to all willing to listen, that he was neither born nor died but visited the planet earth from one date to the other. This, if at all anything, spells out one fundamental truth about our existence. We are mere visitors to this planet and there are only few circumstances that we control. Despite our presumed progress in science, we are not sure where we came from and where we are going and if there is a life after death or the reason behind this illusion, we call our mortal existence.

However, while we stay here, we try to believe that we are permanent and should have everything that we set our eyes upon. We have to control the lives and wish of every living creatures around us including the fellow human beings and other beautiful body & souls’. We wish to dictate what they ought to do and what not to do, what to wear and what not to wear, where to go and where not to go, whom to befriend and whom not to  and the list doesn't stop here. We also want to have everything that is nice and good for ourselves, be it food, wealth, land, forests, water or any other resources. We want it all and we want it for ourselves or for our tribes and we want our tribe to "live long and prosper" and it is true for all living creatures too. This excessive craving for power and lust compounded with uncontrolled greed makes our as well as others live miserable.

My wish is to do away with all these in my new world. Leaving that aside, there is nothing wrong in this mortal world full of unpredictability and surprises. Yes there is nothing wrong with our earth along with its celestial system. I therefore wish not to change any of those.

I would only make a minimal reprogramming of the genes that dictates these characteristics of the living visitors to this planet. This is to ensure that our needs never exceed our requirements or vice versa. We are not driven by greed, our ego doesn't threaten the peace of others and we do not kill each other. Most importantly we have a world devoid of any “arms race”, neither literally nor metaphorically and not even genetically.

Imagine there’s no weapons… imagine there’s no greed… imagine there’s no ego…

Imagine all the beings, living life in peace …Uh ho!. This would be the song of life in my "Remade World" when sung in Lennon's tune.

Oxy and Moron

Mark Twain once said that it usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. I am not sure of the context of that statement but there is no doubt that it is a good example of oxymoron. The dictionary tells me that the rhetorical term “oxymoron” was coined by joining two contrasting Greek words meaning “sharp” (oxy) and “dull” (moron). Everyone uses such phrases in their everyday life without being an oxy or moron or anywhere in between.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the famous German philosopher and author had famously said that “we learn from history that man never learn anything from history”. While George Bernard Shaw, the Irish dramatist and socialist had endorsed this statement is in his lifetime, I find this more relevant today with all the conflicts around then anytime else. That makes this a timeless truth.

That was an example involving famous personalities and serious subject with deep meaning. But there is one such phrase that attracts us lesser mortals like the pied piper of Hamelin and they most certainly are not children. If you still have not guessed it, it is the famous marketing adage

….“ The more you spend, the more you save.”

This is quite a contradicting sentence to put one off, but that’s not what happens in the real world. Once back from such a shopping misadventure, the expression is equally rhetoric….

…”I paid too much for this, but it is worth it.”

Technology has not spared most of us and if you are a windows user, Bill Gates has ensured that we always click Start to Shutdown our computer.  

Donald Trump once said that “the budget was unlimited but, I exceeded it”. I too have managed to exceed the length of this post, though my estimate was limitless. But With all my friends and followers keeping quiet, I can only say that this silence is deafening to my ears. But I will still continue to post new pieces no matter what …. Thank God, I’m an atheist.

Characteristics of Successful People

Once in a while we come across an article analyzing the characteristics or habits of successful people. Not that we always agree with the traits listed the article but I am not one of those whom the world considers being successful and moreover there is no bee line of followers behind me.

I've spent plenty of time reading about successful people, which could or could not be considered to be a research.  Whilst all of them have the skills, talents, and characteristics that enable them to succeed, I haven’t been able to identify any magic trait adopting which will instantly transform me into a celebrity. Perhaps some of their qualities are more dominant and play a greater role in their successes but incidentally we all too possess these skills, talents, and characteristics within us to a certain degree. What we lack however, is the recipe to concoct and deliver a commendable success.

One important fact is that successful people does not always do everything by themselves nor can do everything easily and effortlessly. They have their strengths and weakness and look for others to complement their shortcomings and get associated with person or group of people who possess the skills, talents and training that they require. The associates later become their teammates with a defined relationship which could be either a partner or advisers or employees. It is this combined talent and skills that make an organization grow, prosper to reach the pinnacle of success.

Some of the most commonly discussed traits of successful people are as follows:

• They have the audacity to dream big
• They plan their steps well
• They're willing to work hard.
• They don't take no for an answer.
• They are not deterred by setbacks and failures

The success story always begins with one belief that one day you will succeed and one has to believe in success to become successful. As a toddler we do not feel ashamed to get up and walk even if we stumble and fall hundred times but why should it be any different when we are grown up. Most importantly, failure is only a state of mind and nothing explains it better than the follow statement by Thomas A. Edison.

I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.

That is how Life is ....

If you look at what you do not have in life, you feel miserable due to the long list of have-nots, but when you look at what you have in life, you most probably have everything that you need. You may consider this to be a fallacy but this is the fact of life.

Sometimes we do not make any effort to value what is around us. Imagine sitting by the window with a cup of coffee and you lift the cup, take a careless sip to realize the sugar is not enough. Too lazy to go for the sugar, you manage still somewhat enjoying the coffee. On finishing you discover sugar crystals settled at the bottom. That is how life is.... So look around, may be the sweetness is closer than you think.... 

90/10 in Everyday Life

Stephen R. Covey and the 90-10 Principle are now well known though not as much understood or rather practiced. How we react indeed makes all that difference and it is never more obvious than when you are driving during rush hours. Once I had an experience when the other driver confessed that he was an idiot and asked me what was I?  

http://sumandebray.blogspot.com/2011/01/never-fight-with-idiot.html

That was an eye opener that one has to refresh that 90-10 principle from time to time and that is the exact intent of this post.

One day a taxi was driving in the right lane when suddenly another car reversed out of a parking space right in front of it. The taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and somehow managed to avoid the crash by just inches! The driver of the other car honked and yelled at the taxi. My taxi driver was very friendly and just smiled and waved at the guy. 

How could he just do that when this guy almost ruined the taxi car and sent him to the hospital? This is where the 'The Law of the Garbage Truck' comes to play.

Many people are like garbage trucks and they run around full of garbage which are extreme frustration, anger and disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and anyone could be a victim. 

 We need not get impacted by that but Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Else we end up carrying their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

Life is ten percent what you don’t control and ninety percent how you take it!

Life and Death in this world

Life, death and life after death has always been the turf of philosophers, thinkers and the religious gurus. They have always thought and put forward their theories of beginning of life in this planet. The scientist on the other hand has been been snooping into the outer space and digging out fossils to find some clues about the advent of life in our earth. Life and death are part of every day occurrences in our  life and therefore, we the lesser mortals, have not been totally immune from developing our own theories and ever ready to discuss with anyone who is willing lend their ears. The debate shall continue to rage if there was a creator for all the earthly life forms as per the watchmaker analogy or we developed ourselves as per Charles Darwin's theory.

But once in a while we come to know about some incidents that unsettles all our logical ideas. There are two news of accidental deaths that caught my attention and would like to share.
Are these purely coincidences, occurred just by chance or there is a conductor who is orchestrating everything that goes on in this world. This leaves a question in our mind and no practical way to search for an answer.....

Zooming In Disorder

One day, a few years back  I had an strange urge to pinch on a photograph  on a construction magazine while reading an article. I wanted to expand a picture to find out more about a detail and almost did it. It would have been perfectly normal if I was reading the same article in the iPad, but unfortunately it a conventional paper version of the weekly magazine.

Yesterday we wanted to read the details of an address written in in very small fonts on a bottle wrapper and this time we wished we could pinch to clarity.

Pinch here describes a gesture used with two fingers used on a touch screen interface to zoom in and out. We pinch inwards to zoom in on a picture and outwards to zoom out of a picture or object.

As the line between our digital and non-digital life gets blurred, can this be then considered to be a "zooming in" disorder! I am quite confident that with the dominance of touch screen steadily increasing in our lives, others are suffering from this disorder too.

This post from 2014 has been edited and re-posted as it relevance has increased exponentially.