How many times have we done that routine about soul searching and come up with really mind numbing profound statements about life, the universe and everything else? I am sure everyone at least once in his lifetime has sipped on a cup of coffee occupying a place that to him signifies his inner self and retrospected, introspected and emerged a thoroughly pooped human being at the end of it all. For take it from me, when you put yourself in a microscope that is your inner self, you get magnified beyond any limits that you can imagine (SEMs and EMs be damned). And in this picture when you come to realize the lines on your forehead caused through years of manipulation, obsession, passion, all contributing to that basic fight for survival, believe me that your ideals of how perfect your world is will lower themselves by notches faster than the stock market the day Mukesh Ambani files for bankruptcy.
And we all so flirtingly refer to it as philosophizing. Blame my bad mood because I just realized that I was the one surviving member of the family of the big bad wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the poor piglets’ sty away. And then trace the root cause of this blame to philosophy. Damn you Socrates, may god consecrate you to hell Plato and Aristotle – you can take that path of golden mean of yours and shovel it. But believe me, at all naturally occurring times, introspection is the bully that gets you down not the oft blamed philosophical mood.
The other day I had this fellow renouncing all compliments to his survival on this pitiable planet because he was overawed by the fact that greater men have walked on the road where he believes he is stranded in a traffic jam. Upon sending my congratulations to him for what I considered to be his standout strengths, he shied away from the compliments citing personal clashes with the images that I was projecting and those that he had projected for himself (once again that “inner self” funda). That sent me on my own retrospection trip. A journey which I was thankful when it ended because any further and I would have myself sought out the almighty and slapped him for committing this grave mistake of sending me to live amongst human beings.
But I have this one shrewd conniving constant companion spending a lot of time on my shoulder calling himself my “happy face” and he does to me what Jeeves’ cocktails do to a life threatened Bertram Wooster. I was thankful to find out that for every 100 snide comments/exasperated prayers that I had passed regarding Kareena Kapur’s unnecessarily prolonged existence on this planet, I had also put down 3 regarding the greatness of Satyajit Ray. For every score of insults I had hurled at Ludlum for making me read “Sigma Protocol”, I had prostrated twice in front of “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and sung hymns to Harper Lee. For every dozen rocks I had thrown at my adversaries, I had presented my parents with a bouquet.
Introspectively “Philosophizing” is not bad till the time it assumes the form of an absolute performance appraisal. I have no aversions to becoming aware of my fallibilities as a human being as long as I understand that this in itself lays out the path for my progress towards a better one. I can live with a mental image of me as a rotten egg as long as I realize that the other eggs in the basket are also way past their expiry date. So the question about whether we should totally do away with introspection, retrospection and the entire motley crew which provokes one to utter phrases like “hold that thought”, “park that image” and “take out from this session (as if my past were a Chinese noodle soup!)” or wallow in self pity and renounce all “maya”, rent ourselves a cave in the Himalayas and go on a lifelong unpaid vacation to introspect in the midst of yetis and yaks; is actually a no contest. The key to a practical quest of life is moderation.
The motto to seek is “live a little, learn a little”. Its not that we don’t need no education but I am not applying for a Phd on self realization anytime in this stint on earth. Know that every person in this world is a schizophrenic – the one that he shows the world, the one he knows he is. The mistake that people make is realizing that they are suffering from this omnipresent disorder and pop the red pill to extradite themselves from the matrix that is this society. Live your life as an un-curable patient and you will be quite at home in this asylum of the world. As long as both the faces of your personality are absolutely believable to you and you accept this practice as a basal necessity for playing your part on the world stage and playing it well, there’s nothing wrong in introspectively gaining acceptance in your existence and philosophically acquiring means for continued subsistence against mortal torture.
And we all so flirtingly refer to it as philosophizing. Blame my bad mood because I just realized that I was the one surviving member of the family of the big bad wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the poor piglets’ sty away. And then trace the root cause of this blame to philosophy. Damn you Socrates, may god consecrate you to hell Plato and Aristotle – you can take that path of golden mean of yours and shovel it. But believe me, at all naturally occurring times, introspection is the bully that gets you down not the oft blamed philosophical mood.
The other day I had this fellow renouncing all compliments to his survival on this pitiable planet because he was overawed by the fact that greater men have walked on the road where he believes he is stranded in a traffic jam. Upon sending my congratulations to him for what I considered to be his standout strengths, he shied away from the compliments citing personal clashes with the images that I was projecting and those that he had projected for himself (once again that “inner self” funda). That sent me on my own retrospection trip. A journey which I was thankful when it ended because any further and I would have myself sought out the almighty and slapped him for committing this grave mistake of sending me to live amongst human beings.
But I have this one shrewd conniving constant companion spending a lot of time on my shoulder calling himself my “happy face” and he does to me what Jeeves’ cocktails do to a life threatened Bertram Wooster. I was thankful to find out that for every 100 snide comments/exasperated prayers that I had passed regarding Kareena Kapur’s unnecessarily prolonged existence on this planet, I had also put down 3 regarding the greatness of Satyajit Ray. For every score of insults I had hurled at Ludlum for making me read “Sigma Protocol”, I had prostrated twice in front of “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and sung hymns to Harper Lee. For every dozen rocks I had thrown at my adversaries, I had presented my parents with a bouquet.
Introspectively “Philosophizing” is not bad till the time it assumes the form of an absolute performance appraisal. I have no aversions to becoming aware of my fallibilities as a human being as long as I understand that this in itself lays out the path for my progress towards a better one. I can live with a mental image of me as a rotten egg as long as I realize that the other eggs in the basket are also way past their expiry date. So the question about whether we should totally do away with introspection, retrospection and the entire motley crew which provokes one to utter phrases like “hold that thought”, “park that image” and “take out from this session (as if my past were a Chinese noodle soup!)” or wallow in self pity and renounce all “maya”, rent ourselves a cave in the Himalayas and go on a lifelong unpaid vacation to introspect in the midst of yetis and yaks; is actually a no contest. The key to a practical quest of life is moderation.
The motto to seek is “live a little, learn a little”. Its not that we don’t need no education but I am not applying for a Phd on self realization anytime in this stint on earth. Know that every person in this world is a schizophrenic – the one that he shows the world, the one he knows he is. The mistake that people make is realizing that they are suffering from this omnipresent disorder and pop the red pill to extradite themselves from the matrix that is this society. Live your life as an un-curable patient and you will be quite at home in this asylum of the world. As long as both the faces of your personality are absolutely believable to you and you accept this practice as a basal necessity for playing your part on the world stage and playing it well, there’s nothing wrong in introspectively gaining acceptance in your existence and philosophically acquiring means for continued subsistence against mortal torture.
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