I am learning life

As we grow up, we learn so many things. One of those things is learning from your failures.

I learned a lot from my failures. One of those is that, your failures are not really failures. You see, everything is so  relative.
Success is assumed to be something positive whereas failure is assumed to be something negative.

Like everything else, we have assigned such convention to these two entities. How about, taking these two things in the reverse order, or assigning some other convention to these two entities ?

Well, I decide to assign my own meaning to success and failures, and I assume such definitions, that no matter what happens, I am happy. Isn't that what we are eventually striving for ?

When I was preparing for IIT-JEE and was not able to clear it, I was so disappointed. I was a kid and I had not idea about what was waiting for me in  my life ahead. Thanks to my life, I made awesome friends and had such a good time of my life that I never for once, felt about my failure and in fact I sometimes felt good about my failure.Then I stanced upon this revelation that if I am feeling good about a failure, then isnt the original definition of failure skewed in itself ! I am not supposed to appreciate my failure! Am I ?

Yes, I can do anything since its all relative. And as long as life is good, I can frame and re-create my own definitions if that makes me happy.

Self Evaluation and Evolution

    All things happen in life for a reason.Having said that, it makes sense to substantiate it from my own experiences.

    I am born in a competitive world.If I need something, I need to earn it.To earn it, I need the competence to earn it.And that competence is a relative measure of my capabilities with respect to the capabilities of other people who need the same thing.

    The higher the need for that thing in your world, the higher the competence required.Some people are born with high competence, some make them highly competent by training themselves in a particular way,some are neither born with high competence nor have the capability to train themselves but believe that they possess either of these whereas some have made peace with the fact that they are neither born with high competence nor can they train themselves.In my experience, I have found that people who lie in either the first set or the last set are best off.Those who lie in the second set, consider themselves close to the ones in the first set and with little effort achieve pretty much what they want in life.I would consider them better off too.But I sincerely sympathize with the one's who lie in the third set.And these are the people I have seen most in my life.Well, I can relate myself too with them and this is the set that I am going to talk about the most in my article.Henceforth, I would refer to people in the third set as 'we' to keep things simple and clear.

    Since the beginning, we look up to those who achieve things just by thinking about them.I had a friend, who just needed to be told about a competition or about a scholarship and he simply used to get it because he wanted it.He never made decisions thinking "Can I do it ?".Rather, he made decisions thinking  "Should I do it ?".We on the other hand don't make decisions thinking "Should we do it?".We first chalk out a list of things that we should do. Then from among those things we shortlist things that we can do.And then from among those things that we think we can do, which in itself might be oversubscribed by a large pool of people from the 'we' category  we pick up one or two items and start training ourselves to achieve them.

    In this process, we encounter other people from the 'we' category thereby making things even harder.To make things even simple, 'we' decided to invent  things which came to be known as  'luck' and 'destiny'.So subtle is the nature of 'luck' and 'destiny', that nobody, ever, can dare to define them and challenge them.It is this abstractedness in the very form of 'luck' and 'destiny' that makes one person from 'we' category different from the other 'person' in the 'we' category or else there would be no difference.And it is this difference that accounts for one person's success and the other person's failure.All in the 'we' category.

Whereas all of us in 'we' category,  spend the best years of our life to get into the shoes of the people in the first set or the second set discussed above, those in the last set have already achieved that much satisfaction in their life just by knowing what they belong to the last set.

'We', on the other hand just suffer the consequences of incorrect self evaluation and thus take a much harder path to evolution.

In Pursuit of Happiness

As Chris Gardner(read as Will Smith) says in the movie "pursuit of happyness" , "happiness cannot be achieved,it can only be pursued.."

The much clichéd and debatable topic and somehow I thought of penning down my two cents to it.

How much our life depends on things that surround us,and our happiness in turn depends on them.

We are all a part of this big system,trained to optimize things,to suit us best and give us the best feeling of happiness.We know these things as relationships,work,hobby etc etc.

We are psychologically trained to pursue them and optimize them in a particular way,a specific style and we work head to toe to make it look that way and as long as it looks that way we are happy,else we go sad.

I start a day with this feeling of positiveness and things start turning out my way.I meet my boss in the elevator and have a jolly conversation with him,have an enthusiastic good-morning with my colleague,get to see some interesting mails in my mailbox and to add cherry to the cake say I am given the good news of being bestowed with some award in due respect of my contribution to the company.Can something be better than this ? I say to myself..thinking seamlessly about how perfect my life is and how happy I am.A day as perfect as this is exemplary.

Whereas on the flip side,say after I enter my office. things turn out the way they were and suddenly I get called in a meeting where I am say reprimanded..wuhuu..seems like a bad day for me and here i am unhappy..

Another example:This one fine day I got up early,exercised,had super nutritious breakfast and things go exactly as per plan.I am happy so far,and while i am taking a stroll on the sidewalk that leads to my house that evening,I happening to hit into my ex.This moment which by far was so perfect seems to turn into a sad reality of my life.A live proof of my failure on one particular front.So what am i going to do now ?

Remain happy ?

Go Sad ?

Dont seem to think anything and pretend as if nothing happened and force myself with this feeling of happiness ?

Whatever you say the so called happy day has ended with a depressing and sad feeling and here

I unwillingly part with my happiness ?

Seems so vulnerable..aint it ?

So,does my happiness depends so much on this system ?

Well,ideally it should be something that comes from within,irrespective of what is happening around me,irrespective of what temperature is it outside,irrespective of whether bloody yamuna would go down in level or not,irrespective of the movie i saw,irrespective of the novel i read,irrespective of the conversation i had with somebody,irrespective of my ex or y or z..

Isnt it ?

Well seems so..

Seems like we need to get out the mechanics set up by the system and offer ourselves more choice.As Steven Levitt,the economist says,we need to get rid of conventional wisdom of what is wrong or what is right and define and find out ourselves the meaning of wrong and right,need to define our own moments of happiness and sadness.

just like that

Why is it that we realise our real needs only after we are over with our not so real needs..

Since childhood I never really knew what I want to do in life.Years went by and by and I found myself grappeling with the fierce competition and toning myself according to the emerging market.

At my time it was the engineering market.And most hyped field was the software field.Until then it felt that the software industry was what i was destined to be in.Well then,years passed and I landed exactly where I had wanted..or should have wanted.But after landing here,there is this urge within me that keeps badgering me with the unknown promises I made to myself in my subconscious,the unknown desires that never really could find strength enough to make its way to the conscious.

Well now is the time,since the not-so-real is achieved,the conscious searches for the real-to-achieve within the subconscious,and ironically this search is so wrapped that it comes back to where it started,to the place where I am and always leaves a message which says "explore more".

So,is it really that difficult to know what we want to achieve in life ?

Or is it just nothing that we want to achieve ?

Zero is what we aim for then.This must be the fact.