Thursday, January 26, 2006

It's a Relative Wor(l)d!

This comes as a reply to "The Real World" (with permission from the original author):

Positive and negative, success and failure, good and bad, real and virtual, you and I – everything is relative to something else. The mirror, which we believe so much to be showing the actual picture, deceives us by interchanging the right and left! You stand in front a mirror, raise your right hand, and call it "right" still, but you obviously don't call the same reference when it's someone else other than your reflection. Can you become I? Can I become you? If you answer affirmative, bingo! That's where your mutually opposite terms unite into One, don't ask which one!

Everything happens for your own good, yes. Even if you hit the consoler, it's for your own good – since it takes out your frustration for a second, and it's for the consoler's own good, since he/she would then be cautious when playing the consoler the next time! :-)

Bad doesn't become good if you just think everything happens for good. In fact, like I was saying, there'd be no more good and bad, there'd be just One – the issue. Anything as pure and clear as water is just as pure – colorless, tasteless, odorless! Thus, things don't "turn out" good – things just seem good, ...and that's when you go wrong (another "relative" term)! Why wrong? Because, bad is bad, but bad teaches lessons, and lessons are always good. If you turn a blind eye to bad, bad doesn't stop being bad, obviously, and you're now blindfolding yourself to the circumstances and to the truth. You got one thing right, bro! The cycle repeats – that's what a cycle always did! :-)

Think confident, yes, but did you think this: Is "confident" good?! Yes? Are you sure? Think again. Did you not lose sometimes when you were confident? ...when you knew the end result confidently but finally were in for a big surprise?

So, my point is this: Bad happened and it is definitely bad... ("so feel bad" is what you said. You may say that again, I don't mind!) but then learn the lesson รป that's always good. If you feel bad and leave it at that... hmm! I'll tell you a short story here – a story you may have heard in a different context: Chanakya set out on some mission. On the way, a thorn pierced his foot. For the man he was, he was so enraged that he found that thorny bush in the darkness and set it afire, waited until it burned down, and ...walked on his mission. If bad happens, and all you do is feel bad, then it's like leaving your mission in the middle, in order to set the bush afire. Where's your mission? Pursue it, continue to pursue it!

Those who "boast" of their positive nature... first, don't you want to see that as confidence? ;-) If not, you may be biased, no? People with positive nature have more than a pinch of doubt and anxiety, sure, but then, they're still "positive", and you may want to call it "confident". Words – you choose them, brother! Hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst – I believed this since long. Only later did I realize that this was preached in Vedic, Western, and Chinese philosophy alike! What does that tell you, sir? And, by the way, not all failure is laughing stock! We get our stock of laughing from success too. :-)

"...high goals can help". Positive about it? Or confident? ;-) Or both? Or optimistic? Or hopeful? ...See, each word is different, and each one fits the bill with some positive aspect to it. Positive or negative, it's all one thing – attitude. Realization – this, too, is something that has been held high by several schools of philosophy!

Imagine, analyze, realize, believe, implement... this is the protocol. If this fails, there's something else you missed – introspect. Break things into "modules", check each one for its validity, join them all. If you don't get a valid result, the "joining them all" was not seamless. Check for errors, repeat. Do I need to tell more? :-)

I'd like to hear others' input.