staying.cool

hmmm.. its been a interesting week for me. for various reasons i underwent some mood swings.. some random flashes of thinking.. and one realization.

that still has me a little staggered.
and all this was triggered by some mood shifts, that went from crazy to completely inane.
quite weird.
but then, aren't we all ?

we'll start at the point when my mind went for a toss, as i tried to wrestle some of my emotions to manageable levels. i will note, that i didn't try to stop them from happening, merely from ruling my mind.
i was conscious of everything that was happening to me, i could feel sadness, bittersweet tastes in my mouth when remembering, passion, happiness.. you name it, and i felt it all hurtling through my consciousness.
i was feeling the emotions, and then suddenly realized.

i was conscious that i was feeling.

of what i was feeling. when i was feeling it. when one emotion was replaced with another. the switching of my mind from one track to another.
it was like i was not me. i was not inside myself. i was outside, a neutral observer, watching a patient, while knowing what was going on in his mind. it was all happening to another person, and i was watching.
watching meant that i couldn't do anything. i had to let the process run its course, to allow it to reach a final conclusion.
was i actually thinking independently of feelings ?

thought without emotion.
the ultimate intellectual exercise, when you divorce mind and heart, and purely, abstractly think.
its like performing an experiment on another personality, giving various stimuli and simply, purely observing the effects of each one. understand how your mind thinks given one set of ideas and circumstances. and how it might think under a different situation.

while i did not actually go to the extent of completely dichotomizing two such trains of thought, and analyzing different things at the same time, the sheer idea of it staggered me. and this is also something that has started happening when i simply allow my mind to drift through the many thoughts that keep occurring.

a note i make here, again, is that this may also be seen as me individuating between different thoughts that are crossing my mind at a given time. after all, all emotion can also be thought of as the effect of various thoughts that occur to us at a time. hence completely unrelated thoughts can awaken different effects in us, which may be unexpected.

there is a school of thought that says that all emotion is simply a contamination of the thought process. i am not trying to say that emotion is bad, or that when we think & analyze we should not be feeling anything about it.
it biases the way we think. it can shape the way that your mind will work. the results, the solutions you arrive at, are bound to be affected by the way that you feel about something. regardless of what excuses explanations we come up with, this is bound to happen.

and therefore, there is yet another school that says that we must always feel when we think. that without emotion, man becomes machine. and hence, emotion is an integral part of the process, and thus has to be considered when we are analyzing or solving something.

this is not a debate on which one is right. or even an analysis of which one i belong to. this is just a tertiary note that i am making.

crazy ? cool ? i really don't know.
i do know that some things will be explored.

“what do we lose in twenty-one grams?”

twenty-one grams. 21. the exact body weight that we lose when we die.
that figure can be defined in so many other ways.

What is 21 grams ? life ? death ? consciousness ? the final end of the multicellular processes that allow us to define ourselves as biologically alive ? the loss of mind functions which give us the sensations, the ideas, the thoughts that make up a living breathing person ?
highly rhetorical though it may be, can we really define those twenty-one grams ?

when we finally pass on, we take so much with us.
a life lived for a period of time. memories, conversations, relationships that have defined us. connections made, ideas shared, changes made through us. to the world around us.
or do we ?

everything mentioned above is not solely attributable to us alone. according to the many theories that make the rounds, we apparently continue to live in the connections we made; in the thoughts that others have for us, about us.

apparently.

i have probably said ad infinitum that we can't define life.
and yet, i keep trying. we all do.
we all live our lives linking, and thus, realizing the people around us. paradoxically, we never manage to come to terms, connect with ourselves.

can any of us truly realize ourselves?
our potential, our being, ourself.

like those twenty-one grams, we too can be defined in so many ways.
as a human, as a person, as a name, as a number, as emotions, as connections, as life, as death.
so many, many things, and yet, as nothing.

i seemed to have reached an impasse here. i say i cannot define it and yet i keep trying.
but i can see one thing right now.
it is whatever i see.

as we all see it. as we want to. as we don't want to. your definition of reality is your own.
which means that living with definitions pre-defined, that you know not, that you don't even understand; eventually means that your life is not your own.

and, at the end of it all, that may be the only thing that you can call your own.

hmmm.. it's been a hectic week. again, blogs on hold, blog on hold, sleep on hold, life on hold…

i was going through the mental dredges, trying to make sense of the muck that i've accumulated over time. more than one of you tried to make sense of what i was going through, and help.
thank you.

i was not able to make sense of what was going on. what to do, where to go with it, how to live with it.. in short, i was just running around in circles, thinking that keeping on plugging away at it means that i can find a way around it.
there is no way around it.
then what is the solution ?

my earlier solution, that of simply separating myself from them, is firstly what got me here; and as i realize now, simply not possible beyond a certain point.
all this is obviously hindsight.. friends of mine have tried to warn me against this in vain.. but as i've said before, you never listen and learn, you have to wallow in the muck and suffer. then you don't do it again.

now what ?
good question.
[no answer]

here i am. trying to make sense of it. trying to devise solutions to problems, that are purely in my own mind. trying to stay crazy cool in a weirder world.
for all i know, the HGTTG could be right in saying that when someone makes sense of it all, “it” will be replaced by something even more complex.
which might have already happened.

interestingly, though, listening to the HGTTG (yes, i found the original BBC series; and yes again, i have already read the book), has helped me in making sense.
that is, to not make sense.
paradoxical ? confused ?
aren't we all ?

the interesting thing is how books, or for that creativity, can serve as real guides to life. The Godfather, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, The Matrix, Adaptation, Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes…
the list can go on and on.

when we create, we think. we give an outlet to the parts of our brain that need expression. we make ourselves go crazy, so as to redefine our definition of sanity. the only way in which we can actually use the potential that our brains have to offer to us, is by clearing it out every now and then. “clearing the cache” in a way.

this does not mean that we forget about what we have already. rather, we focus on them, verbalize, define them…
as they define us.

the only way in which you can ever come to terms with what is around, is to come to terms with yourself. you define the world around you. or even how it appears to you. and how it can seem to behave.
and one of the major factors that affect this for you is what you are thinking.
and emotions are what affect those.

considering, when happy, the world seems to be an amazing place; rain has its own beauty then. when sad, it seems bleak.. even on a sunny day. and so on.

can i define my own universe ? it seems possible ?
what is my universe ? there, it extends.. to infinity.

we are all connected, so we cannot limit our definitions. what affects us, effects changes in us; is bound to create ripples that affect people around us who are connected to us.

sense or nonsense ? conscious or sub-conscious ?
real or virtual ?

you tell me.

hmmm.. i talked of devils of the mind. such devils that i have to fight. that i have to conquer, so i can live.

i do not know if peace is part of the bargain. the biggest problem is that peace has never really been part of my psyche for some time. each time, every time, they rear back up. as it goes - “each time i thought i got out, they simply pull me back in”.

interestingly, this manifests itself in so many ways.
regret. random events. decisions made. failures. successes. paths taken. paths not taken. choice. the only apparent way out.
they all seem to come together at times. they all seem to mount. why didn't i do it that way at that time ? why did i not do this ? did i really achieve something at that point ? how did anything i have done make a difference to whom? to what ? what if..?

if. the worlds longest story. a life's shortest lament.

it is all part of the game that the mind plays. the constant tormet, the burning agony of events that could have been different. the pain of knowing parts of life could have changed, if not for what was done.
what you feel when you know that you could have done better, you could have been different. but wasn't. but didn't.
at that point when it happened, you say - “what's done is done. for the best. it'll all work out.”

but at the end of it all, when you suddenly get hit by realizations, you feel that heavy heart that tells you that you know.

but for you, your own life could have been different.
the sweet pangs of anguish at chances lost start.

can one ever really vanquish this ?

a small note - i am going into parts of my head that i don't reveal. haven't revealed. i am trying to bare the soul in an effort to get to the problem. or problems. there are dark things here, that i haven't talked about except in indirect circular ways. ever. its not an easy jouney, and not one that everyone is going to enjoy.
i have not been dropping around blogs as regularly, putting it down to work, to commitments is not my style. to me, you always make time for things that matter. i was trying to figure out what to do. whether to go down one path or another. that meant that others were kept on a slight hold. i am still not sure, and am wondering if some things are better done privately rather than publicly.

why am i doing it here ? somehow, when i put it down here, i am not facing it alone, it makes a difference. its better than a diary that i alone read. and probably brood over more.

that is not just another ranting blog of a person who is kinda screwed in the head.

but then who isn't ?