Cleaning the desktop

Cleaning your computer's desktop is like cleaning the house (or should I say, opening up old photo albums) - you get to find so many big memories scattered thru little documents here and there which leave you wondering... wondering about time AND how fast it flew by, that the entire desktop got filled up with so many document. And again looking at the flip side of the story one seldom realizes that such a long time went by without noticing all the memories.

On a philosophical note (Can't help it sorry!!) it depicts an analogy that we sometimes miss on acknowledging the things despite seeing them. All the documents were there right in front of my eyes and I bet I would have religiously visited my desktop a dozen times at least in a day - seldom realizing the fact that bits and pieces of time were captured out there... Just that when we have time and visit those documents some leave us with good memories and some with learning(s)...

As they say "The past is never dead, it is not even past. (William Faulkner)" - I think the past "lives" in our hearts. However, the good about memories is that it gives humans a chance to transcend back in past and re-live those moments. I am not absolving that living the moments again is not bad, I am sure there will be tons of things / people you would want to just erase from your memory given a chance! :) I am sure there is always a lesson that one would not want to miss on and sometimes such lessons can be learnt while doing introspection on past events.

Often less noticed and mostly taken for granted feeling - after this effort to organize the cluttered reminiscents - is the ecstacy of cleanliness and satisfaction; which is out of world and inexplicable. I might sound rude/harsh here if you think otherwise - but so far that is what has been my experience. Sometimes one feel so engrossed in the course of action that the time stands still for the person. And other gamut of things revolving around go unnoticed.

I read this quote from Thomas Fuller about memories, sounds pretty good to conclude...

"Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart."

So, keep taking a small bite from the left over to realize how tasteful the life has been :)

PS: Sorry - couldn't talk about what all I found on my desktop but may be thats again food for thought for later - stay tuned.

Art of philosophy...

I often get to hear from my friends and others that my conversations are a little more than philosophical. More often than not, I get into some discussion and people ask me to stop "inventing" philosophies.

I am left completely puzzled when I get to hear such things. If I now take a step back and give it a second though, I am sure of nothing but one - I have been trying to describe a well established fact instead of "inventing something." I am sure some people will find me "justifying" certain things when I put forward a set of arguments.

As they say - put your foot in someone else' shoes to feel what they feel - for a second I will try different shoes. If I were on the other side of the table, I might will call it "invention" coz I may have made a conscious decision not to believe in what the other person is saying, OR I have known those facts but haven't been able to acknowledge it. Often I find running away from the responsibilities an easier option compared to dealing with the situation.

The very phrase "inventing the philosophy" - however catchy it may sound, DID got me thinking. I was deliberately trying to figure the definition of this word in my world... It is ironical when we put conscious effort to come up with something, we seldom come up with something that we will be pleased with / and feel satisfied about. Having stated this fact, I couldn't not come up with anything meaningful. At lack of originality, I landed up running to "Lord Google" to rescue me. I wanted to see if / how others had defined this word.

Later that day, I was busy running errands and this thought pops up in my mind "Philosophy is an art of being spontaneously logical." and it made so much sense to me. I have been just trying to link the fact in more logical way such that its easy to see, understand and more importantly believe in.

Over a period of time I have observed that its important to have spontaneity. This saves one from getting into a confined and traditional thought process. If definitely brings up an interesting question - if the art is all about being spontaneous, can this be learnt at school? I see people taking up philosophy as the major and spending years at university to learn it. Not sure if that's the playground where one can sharpen the skills. I think the ability to logically relate the things come from living more life. When I say living more life, I mean paying enough attention to our daily trivial experiences such that we learn out of them. I somehow have gotten a feeling over a period of time that if we make philosophy a profession / or offer a specialization, we rather would end up creating a useless factory to produce jackass people trying to beat other bunch of jackass folks for what they have wrote / said in past. Again more important and critical part of the issue here is, how would you start quantifying various paradigms of such a liquid subject.

I am sure we can talk about this forever and write a thesis on it but I will leave it here...

As Albert Einstein says "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results", may be those jackass folks were doing the right thing..

I will come back to this topic for sure and add / update more content!!

"What else...?"

Weekends are generally the days to catch up with friends over the "phone" - esp. if it happens to be a long weekend. AT&T's weekend and night hours allow me to be vocal. It was the long weekend because of Labour Day and I was chilling on a beautiful Sunday eve. After getting tired of aimlessly staring at the repeatedly announced "Gustav" news again and again, I finally gave up on TV and got myself a drink. (Its ironical that TV was on mute and subtitles were "on")

As the evening went by I kept dialing the numbers. Predictable answers from them not only didn't go unnoticed but also it gave me a hint of monotony taking over in their lives. I hate to answer "What else" type of questions and the degree of my peevish dislike can also explain me how much would they hate to answer this question.

During my corporate communication subject in second year of graduate course - I learnt about a term called "Semantic Gap." People feel a little odd but I find it a part of basic courtesy to say "Hello, how are you doing" to the person I am sitting next while traveling. This is normally a good ice breaker and helps me fight boredom while I converse. I have experienced "Semantic Gap" in real life very much and I think its natural that two new people who have just met, will run out of subjects soon.

I think the a phrase in any form that can be interpreted as "What else?" depicts semantic gap. The question normally pops up when two people run out of a common subject to talk about. For a second I was asking myself a question - am I talking to my friends or are they the fellow passenger sitting right next to me?

I think this could be attributed either to disconnect at my end with my friends which happened over a period of time in a gradual manner OR it can be attributed to the cocoon they have developed due to the nature of circumstances when they were fighting so far away from me AND the life style they have adopted.


Probably this is the price we are paying for urbanizing ourselves and as Bashir Badra precisely describes in his Urdu Sher -

Kuchh na bacha kahene ko, har baat ho gai;
Aoo kahin sharaab piye raat ho gai.
Suraj ko chonch me liye, murga khada raha;
Khidki ke parde khinch diye, raat ho gai.

(I cannot avoid using native indian language(s) when it comes to describing, please grant me - here is the translation)
Everything has been said and done - nothing is left,
Lets go and have a drink - looks like its night
Rooster woke up with when Bright sun meets dawn
But if I close the curtains - its still night for me

I feel Petty for our lives how it has turned out to be. Drinks define the evening and if you pull down the curtains, we think its night. In the metros life pumps in 24 X 7 and now people have come to terms with time where they take liberty to define their own day and night.

I am not an exception - I work long hours too. I have been the culprit to prioritize my work over calling up my friends and asking their how abouts. I have missed attending their weddings and engagements. The only thing I am feeling glad about is, I didn't let this observation just go. I promised myself to take it more than seriously and ensure to come up with a mitigation plan :-) On that brighter side, its already 3:05 AM (EDT) here and I will hit the hay.