Nobody Is Perfect

          One of the things that differentiates United States from India is that you have wide variety of options to choose from, even if you want to buy yogurt. You have plain, flavored, not-fat and the normal ones, needless to mention that there are legion of flavors to choose from. I wondered how many can go for flavored as opposed to the plain yogurt. But then I thought that there are people who like it, who just want to try it, who tempt kids to have it by bribing with his/her favorite flavor and so on. Isn't it possible to manage without those kind of options like we do it back home!? Then I realized that even we have flavored lassi.

          In a world composed of people with different IQ, EQ and SQ how do you make friends that are very near to our heart ? How do you find people that we love beyond words can express ? Sometimes, we even have reason(s) to not like people if not hate them. How does it happen ? May be we like something  or few things in a person and decide that rest doesn't matter. Or even conclude otherwise. It is as if our brain is executing a well-defined and structured algorithm giving an output that dictates our action. All this happens without our knowledge.

          We come across new people every day. Few stick with us forever, few for not so long and few don't. this is not a criterion to decide whether a person is good or bad because there really isn't a good or a bad person and all that we think is relative. Really, nobody is good or bad but one might jump to that conclusion keeping him as a threshold. When this is the case, how justified is it to judge or comment on others ? Also I feel it is despicable to transfer the baggage of judgement, on someone or something, to others that might actually love those traits. I said judging is bad but are we allowed to have an opinion on others ? If yes, can we impose it on others ? Well, I will leave let you think about this.

          There is a fine line between opinion and judgement. My point is that I have no right to judge anyone and even if I do it is imperative to keep it to myself. I should work on changing my opinion about that someone. If successful I will have a friend for life and if not I will just move on without passing further judgement. I might say having assorted choices of yogurt is a little overboard but before declaring that, I should make sure that I don’t like lassi! This makes life much more interesting and tension free. We all are familiar with the quote "don't judge me until you've walked in my shoes'. Let us try to implement it and only to make ours and other's lives better.

Your Loss Is Your Gain

          This post is inspired by the ideas that formed a cocktail in my mind and stayed there for a really long time until today when I finally thought of giving it some shape. This post is a long time due. Not that I never made up my mind to write about but I always felt it was incomplete. But today I felt it was a bit okay if not perfect. So here it is.  

          I am sure that all of us have heard and agree with "change is the only constant". This is not a debate that argues otherwise but an effort to substantiate it through my experience. I have changed a lot in a very less time considering my reluctance to sudden change around me. There is a drastic change in my personality, like and dislikes, priorities and preferences, opinions, emotions etc. I changed from a person who never ordered anything that she didn't know about in a restaurant to someone who did not hesitate to try '5 spice duck' in a Thai restaurant, which by the way I loved. This change was possible because I resigned the introvert in me and put the carefree alter ego to work, only because Bharath asked me to do it. 

          There is a dialogue in the entertainment world that, "if a person really loves you, he should accept you without changing who you are". I am sure most of you agree with it. I strongly believed till I realized how Bharath always encourages me to change and I am really enjoying the new me. He always advocates that I try something new, especially if he enjoys doing it. It is okay if someone tries to change you, especially if it for your own good and if you are really missing something in life that you can otherwise experience. When you keep yourself in a changing pace continuously, why do you think it is bad for someone who loves you to change you if it is for your own benefit? I say you should always listen to your mind and not ego. 

          We are open to change if it benefits us. But do we welcome the change with open hands if it is for others? Why is it difficult to change if it is not self-provoked? I am not implying that you need to turn ourselves around for Someone. Also that Someone has to come halfway along if you are ready to take that path. That is how a relationship is built. Sometimes you might be skeptical if the other person is really ready to walk the way with you. But it is not up to you to control the other person. It is in your hand to take the first step and show that you are willing to change and solve the same riddle in that Someone's mind. At least you will know if it was really worth your time or not. It is okay to lose and show the special Someone that you are ready to lose but only till you are respected for that. Relationships can have different course of events if you believe "it is okay to lose". You don't have to change if it's not what you want but there is no harm in trying it, even if it is for Someone else. Relationships are about striking the balance and it is okay if you are the one to start compromising. 

          I have made legion of decisions that registered my destiny to where I stand today. Although I don't regret a good number of those, given a chance I would love to go back and do certain thing that I did a bit differently. I would have been a physicist and not an engineer if I can go back to "the 17 years old stop" of the time machine or I would have fought a little with my besties at "the 14 years old stop" or may not have chosen to go to hostel at "the 11 years old stop". Having said all these, I am proud to be an engineer, having fought with my besties and totally enjoyed the hostel life. Either ways, you can't change the past but can correct the future but making amends necessary.  

          It is no secret that we all change with time. We moved from pencils to pens, half-ticket to full-ticket, bicycles to bikes and then to cars, schools to colleges, cereals to oats, casuals to formals, desktops to laptops, handheld video games to Xbox, bedroom to master bedroom, zircon to diamond, being comfy on flats to wearing only heels and so on. But be the change that makes you happy and the ones that make your life less aggravated. It is okay to change for others and change others but for better.

The ONE

          I am the first person in my closest friend circle to get married. It almost an year now and it feels like Bharath and I got married only yesterday. I remember and enjoyed every single ritual of the wedding. I happily participated in everything even though I was very, very sleepy. Needless to say, it was one of the best days of my life and I will cherish this forever. I am sure you can connect to this if you are already married. As for my unmarried friends, you will definitely feel this on your special day. This post is not about my marriage or the wedding ritual but it is about the random questions that pop in everybody's mind before deciding who is the ONE.

          I was not at all ready to get married when I first spoke to Bharath. In fact we spoke for the first time because he had volunteered to help me come to United States to pursue my masters. We spoke over and over again, we liked each other and here we are today happily married. I never took anybody's advice on what are the qualities that I have to look for in a person before deciding he is the ONE. Neither did I have any list of my own. If I have to put it in words, I would say I felt connected to Bharath on the very first day. And even he proudly says that even he felt connected to me.

          Make a list of your very close friends. Now pick each name individually and try to remember the qualities that you like in that particular person that made you decide he or she can be your friend. I bet you will not find any because you cannot make friends based on your requirements. You just become friends and then you do all that you can to improve and maintain the bond. You will never let that person be angry on you for long, you fight and patch up immediately, you make fun of each other, you share, you care, you express, you listen, you do everything in your power to make each other's journey in life beautiful. For me, this sounds like marriage.

          One of my friends recently asked me "how will I know if a person is the one I can spend the rest of my life with?". To be honest I couldn’t answer that question initially but then I told her to look for a friend in that person and not for a husband. If you can connect with him as a friend, then he can be your life partner. This is a subjective matter but I bet this will be one in the list of many things to look in a partner, if you have many. This was the only criterion in my list and so I could think only of that.

          Marriage is spending each day, year after year with the same person. Marriage is not about finding a perfect life partner.  It is about how both can get accustomed to each other and lead a happy life. It is about finding a person who has same taste as yours, but not to the extent that it makes life boring. It is about finding someone with whom you can be your own self, with whom you can talk anything without having the fear of being judged, with whom you can feel light even with a heavy heart, with whom you can be happy even though you are sad, with whom you can gossip, with whom you can debate over futile topics for hours without effecting your mood, with whom you can grow to be a better person, with whom every single second is a new experience. When you find such ONE, by all means feel you will feel "hawaye chalne lagi hai, slow motion mein dupatta udne laga hai aur aasman mein chaand kuch zyada bada hua hai" *winks*

          Lot of us are widely influenced by the thought, "how can one decide if the he or she is the ONE by talking only for five minutes?" I say the whole idea of falling for someone is merely on how you feel about that person in the first five minutes of the meetings. Rest everything is built around it. As Confucius said, I paraphrase and quote "a journey of lifetime begins with five minutes' ". Considering that we are more than ready to take chances when it comes to the most futile things in life, we have to at least start by giving 'five minutes' when it comes to choosing the ONE.  And in my own experience, five minutes are more than enough to connect with The One. Trust me when I say I took less than that.

Feeling and Emotions

Positive, comparative and superlative degrees; we all are familiar with these three bunch of words since childhood English grammar class, “degrees of comparison”.  I was baffled by the way each word, when used in a same sentence delivered drastic change in the meaning than that it previously conveyed. The way the negative sentences became more negative and the positive ones got more positive fascinated me then. My point is, there are always better things to learn, experience and enjoy than what we are up to right now. 

“Happy, happier and happiest”, this bunch of three words were probably among the first few we learnt under the topic “Degrees of comparison”.  It is the basic feeling that every living entity senses in this world, albeit the way of sensing it is diversified by their own sanity. If I were bestowed upon by the gift to listen to nature, perhaps I could say that a plant would be happy when a bud on its branch blooms, a flower would be elated when the bee feeds on its nectar, a twig or the jute string would be contented to be the part of a nest, a tree would be happy when the spring arrives, a sunflower would be glad to see the first ray of rising sun and so on, stress your imagination. I could possibly enumerate this infinitely.

When asked to define “happiness” formally, most of us can’t because it’s something that can only be felt or shared and not explained. It takes only an expert in etymology or a lexicographer to put this abstract emotion in words. Not only “happiness” this, applies to every abstract feeling that could be felt: grief, crisis, failure, humiliation, deprecation, ecstasy, frustration and many more innately present within us.

The utmost or only desire of a person’s life is to struggle diligently, all his life to be happy himself, place himself amidst happy people and do happy things. The real happiness is that which renders perpetual joy rather than ephemeral ecstasy. Unfortunately, although most of are aware this, we set our odyssey seeking the impulsive, interim methods to please our soul. It’s definitely not incorrect, but overlooking the aeon happiness engrossed in finding these temporary methods is where we go wrong.  After all the memory-wall of our lives is to be decorated with assorted forte. But it’s us who have to choose if what we do deserves a place in the memory wall.

We all have our own interpretation of the ideal or perfect life. It may be simple or complex that others tend to think it’s impractical. Few always resist anything and everything that detours them from walking along the path they intend to follow. And a few fall under the category where they don’t hesitate to forfeit their dreams to assuage others. But I say it’s of no use if what we do is not appreciated by the people for whom we sacrifice our dreams.  Also, what we really have to think is can appreciation compensate the loss we have suffered?

I want to quote my favorite line by Mark Twain “Sorrow can take care of itself, but to get true benefit of joy, you must share it”. I had slight disagreement with this line when I came across it for the very first time. The reason was that I always thought and was taught that the intensity of the sorrow can be decreased when shared. But it didn’t take me long to realize that sharing the grief can just make you feel light momentarily. But the joy we share will be cherished forever, with the same intensity. Sorrow is something to be forgotten and only joy is something to be shared. It’s because we can cry in isolation, but to laugh we need company. 

Crisis, humiliation, deprecation and such are something that contribute towards molding us for better or worse depending on how we look at it. Also it makes us mentally prepared to encounter same or similar situations in the days to come. But how far it is appropriate to bear it is something that we have to deliberate ourselves. Revolting against it is conventionally a normal tendency. But that just intricates the already worse situation, increases the level of frustration. As a result our main motto of revolting to solve the issue increases cumulatively. Tolerating a few things to retain our mental peace doesn’t mean you can’t overturn. Also it doesn’t mean that one needs to be masochistic. Ignoring a few things just to avoid the ill repercussions that are likely to occur for being infuriated doesn’t project one to be timorous. It only portrays how tolerant he can be and his wit of being indifferent to nontrivial happenings around.

We are emotionally attached to someone. Even though we don’t actually talk to the often, it is them whom we remember when we are in trouble or depressed. At times when there is lot of unpleasant events, thoughts or issues running across our mind, we put all our will & wit together to try and phrase it to share it with them. We do expect them to favor us in whatever they tell in return. Be it advice for a problem or analyzing the mistake of someone who caused us to feel low. What happens if the person whom we trust say otherwise? We resist sharing such things with that person since we always think we are right. It is human tendency to tag himself as the most righteous person in the world. We don’t accept any inclination that says otherwise. No one is wrong in this world but actions reflect their mental state or their understanding.

Argument is something that is to be avoided. We cannot change anyone by futile arguments nor can anyone change us. Isn’t it wise to avoid this is and keep our opinions to ourselves? If a person can find preserver peace in his heart by prayers we need to respect his emotions and not elucidate about nonexistence of God. I am not proposing that we should never try and change a person when his practice are adversary to others. My idea is that argument is not the better way to mend anyone. It may lead to several unanticipated mishaps.

            The terrorists are taught only to kill people. They won’t even know how it is different from leading normal life. They don’t know there exits an alternate life. The concept of committing murder for obvious reasons will be imprinted permanently into their subconscious levels that it gets impossible to overwrite. Ajmal Kasab was taught nothing but to be a terrorist and lynch people. My voice doesn’t of course favor him. I must admit his death sentence is a lesson to all the people who teach and compel young minds to live to die killing. There is something incorrigible going on around us.

            Emotions, mind, feelings are the one that builds the personality of an individual and hence the whole human race. Precisely emotions, shared or kept within, rule the world. Conflict of emotions originates war. Meeting of emotions emerge friendship, irrespective of the scale. Emotion is the base and face of the world. Adolf Hilter’s emotions changed the world and so did Mahatma Gandhi’s but in two different directions. It’s only us who can decide the way life is to be lead, if we aren’t aware of the ways then we must make an effort of taking the advice from the experienced ones. Live life the best way possible, as we all know, a moment can be spent only once.

Politics…!?

Although this post may seem politically biased, I would like to say it is otherwise.

16/05/2014 is the day that is to be remembered for having witnessed the historical win of BJP in the world’s largest democratic nation. As it is known the election process solely revolved around the popularity of the individuals from three different parties, one being the newly emerged. There was a clear opposition for the UPA government all over the nation. The AAP, also due to the folly actions that was seen Delhi, caused many people to withdraw the allegiance. So, then political fight all came down to rebuking Mr. Narendra Modi. My point is not that NaMo is right, but the strategy employed by AAP and congress parties is preposterous. If you want to rule a nation with the ideologies that you think are superior, why not win it by proving your points than to blame your counterpart? 

One of the biggest challenges that any nation possess in the world is corruption. I sadly have to admit that it commensurates to a higher rate in India. I would like to underscore the fact that it’s not the only issue face. I agree it’s the root cause of every injustice, but how reasonable is it to start cutting a fully grown Ficus religiosa from its root. If you want to uproot a century old tree, you begin by cutting it branches and not by chopping the root. It is not difficult for a nation who has learned to live with corruption to survive a little more and wait till the branches are cut, am I wrong in saying so? I’m not against AAP but cutting the root is what they ventured for by resigning as a CM.

Also I would like to present my opinion on passing a bill, amending the law, etc. in the name of reformation. What should to the new bill contain that can prove it to be better than the existing one? Although the December 2012 incident raised the wave of demanding the capital punishment for what happened, as the criminals fully deserve it without doubt, how reasonable is it to state “crime is crime” and extend the same punishment to every other thing that happens around us? Of course it’s not a new thing that the extent of crime determines the punishment, but my question is that can you blindly punish the corrupt by framing “draconian” law against them once for all by passing the all know JAN LOKPAL bill ? Isn’t it just like cutting the tree by root? Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav who caused the generation of thousands of crores only from railway was imprisoned for being corrupt. But isn’t it better to punish him by compelling to bring such changes in every other department and not giving him the cried? It benefits us and as well as teaches him a solid lesson. I just said this to put forth my opinion that imprisonment is not the ultimate option for every crime.

I’m definitely against corruption just like you are. But what if I were given an option between fighting for my rights in court and save my time, energy & money by paying some amount of bribe to a public servant, for a small crime such as hitting a wall by mistake and harming my own vehicle? Well, I don’t know what your answer would be but I would definitely choose the latter. Where lies the problem now? Should I change my decision and choose to go through laborious court proceedings or spare myself my time? Perhaps I feel bribing is okay in this case since I was concussed by such incident and you haven’t gone through it. Also as one of my friends questioned back saying: what if someone who hit you got away paying bribe? But it is definitely subjected to condition that he should be really guilty. If it wasn’t deliberated, what’s the use of imprisonment since the whole issue was “accidental”. It may sound preposterous, does it really? By such illustration all I mean is that terminating a corrupt public servant is the solution to eradicate corruption, great minds should meet to find better ways. If I can take liberty to compare, it is just like killing a HIV+ hoping to eradicate AIDS. Killing a patient doesn’t eradicate the disease.

Also it is reasonable to believe that the reformation should start somewhere and a chance should be given to a person who wants to try. But Mr. Arvind Kejariwal rejected his chance in Delhi by resigning for the post of CM of my nation’s capital. Does that mean everything else in Delhi was so perfect that he did not have anything else to change or enhance? He was given a chance by people to rule and put his words into actions but he had the audacity to reject chance. The basic virtue that an individual or any leader is expected to possess is patience, he lacked that very trait. And he certainly paid for his mistakes. I liked this man before for I personally felt that he gave voice to the youth, but how far is it okay to reject he duty bestowed on a leader for which he elected for a mere fact that he felt corruption is the only problem? 

Election is the time where we get to know how far and deep a candidate’s oratory skill is, be it innate or developed as per the circumstances and requirements. We have witnessed a legion of them all through 1947 or may be a few even before. With such an amazing track record of bearing witness to many such speeches, I certainly believe that we have acquired some sort of nerve, at least in recent days, to differentiate between the reasonable and incredulous claims that the political candidates make. Also we being the firm believers of the policy “give chance to someone who tries” tend to find even a small trace of sincerity in the candidate and vote for him. We certainly don’t expect him to resign, do we?

Talking about the ritual of resignation, there is another practice wherein a minister, MP, MLA, or higher government officials are compelled to resign as endue of certain unfortunate event that is hard to control. But can resignation really solve the issue at hand? The opposition speaks about resignation which best iterates the fact that we are well versed in the art of taking advantage of any kind of minute downfall our counterpart goes through. Our politician make their living conspiring for the same, not putting themselves in the shoe of the man in power. Blaming one another is precisely what they do. 

Among many more political strategies, there is one that follows election. Candidate and his associates pay utmost and diligent attention to the promises made by his competent, scrutinize them meticulously and use them as weapon against the winning candidate. Mr. Arvindh Kejariwal suffered this. During the Delhi election he had promised he would solve certain issues in 15 days. He couldn’t do it which was turned as a weapon against him. But what if he couldn’t do in 15 days? There could be various other pressures or another task of higher priority. Can a person or a party who has not managed to do alone the required work blame a man who is trying to bring certain new reforms in just 15 days of 5 years term? Sounds ridiculous.

Same is the case with the indictment made against Mr. Narendra Modi when he mentioned about his wife officially. What if he is married and the public was not aware of that fact? Isn’t the fact whether a man is married, unmarried, divorced or remarried exclusive of the reformation he could bring with his ideologies? There are many other political candidate who have been practicing polygamy against the law, doing absolutely nothing in return to the citizens who elected him. What if Modi is married? Is that really an obstacle for us to debate over?

          I would like to rise a flag of appreciation to Ms. Jayalalitha’s party in the state of Tamil Nadu. She has employed various steps that deserve appreciation beyond words. She showed it is possible to provide food, pension for old people and widows, medical and banking facilities to the rural and remote parts along with the other elements that couldn’t be categorized under the title “basic needs”. As a result of this, many people who had migrated to different states with a hope of earning better living gave a second thought of returning to their hometowns. She showed that all there can be given to the people without compelling the working class to pay more tax. She deserves an award as opposed to the recognition that AK got before his lunatic resignation. Any government that works sincerely for it is citizens will be given another chance. No government or party is above citizens, as the adage goes “Janata Janardhana”.
 

I wrote all these just to put forth my idea that all politicians are same in my nation. There are so many works that every party has left pending, mainly on purpose for what is termed as “vote bank politics”. Everything that I mentioned above is what we all understand as the synonym of politics. But to what extent can it rise? Should be a certificate of merit for politicians? It’s not the solution since merits and awards are not correlated with the common sense one must possess to rule us. Who will think of the possible alternatives? Even if you have who will transcribe this opinion into bill and then into rule? Greed is the mother of all ills in the world. We all must contribute to the change we aspire for a very famous adage, but we prefer to bribe the police than to pay a higher fine when we are caught for violating the traffic rules. We need to really do our bit and change the way we think and examine everything around, because indeed “change begins from me”.

World is no different from you…!!

At times the grief makes you so heavy that it compels you to lighten yourself by sobbing it out.

You feel light with every tear drop that tickles out.

It ceases to make you strong, but makes you vulnerable.

Gives you a cynical outline for everything.

At times the grief makes you so heavy that it compels you to lighten yourself by sobbing it out.

You feel light with every tear drop that tickles out.

It ceases to make you strong, but makes you vulnerable.

Gives you a cynical outline for everything.

You begin to feel every random activity happening around is pointing at you.

Everything you see, feel, experience, infuses a cumulative fear in you.

Chokes your throat, your own eyes threatens you by not letting to sob it out.

Gloom stretches all along your way, pervades your world.

Craving to smile again, you spend your days, wishing to walk alone, loving you own company.

Dancing to the rhythm of your heartbeat, you wish to live again.

The gushing wind whispers a tale of hope into your ears.

Rising sun sets you with new dreams.

Smelling the air around, you learn the world has changed, but not new.

You wonder where you can place yourself amongst everyone you see, until you realize, world is no different from you.

Rule Book...!!

Rules, as we know are set of pillars virtual pillars that balance everything around us. Whole universe is governed by rules. Everything, from the heliocentric theory to the way we ingest the food is predominated by rules. Be it formulated and compelled to be strictly observed or tacit, we follow rules in everything we do.

Now a small kid knows the adage “rules are meant to be broken” even before he even acquires the intellectual ability to understand the meaning of “RULE”. So I don’t want to repeat it over and over again. It is not the formal rule book that abode in schools, library, holy places or any sort of game I am talking here, which has to strictly observed. By “Rule book” here, I mean the tacit rules that exist between friends, couples, parent and a kid, and between an individual and his acquaintance. The rules we believe we have framed by default and expect others to accord with it. However the amount of expectation may depend on how much we are into that person. But we respect them and never take it for a toss for we care for them.

 Among friends, especially among girls, the clauses in the rule book go as many as stars visible on a new moon night. May be like sharing the news about the apparels, accessories, shoe etc that one buys in her recent shopping; latest crushes; hook-ups; break-ups; wishing on birthday, new years, festivals etc; if not the entire experience, sharing the mere information about the newly visited place and the list goes on and on. Sometimes if anyone of the rule is broken, it might hither the friendship to some other corner, although the consequence might depend on how one sees it and the depth of the friendship. Others might find these really silly, but can they possibly understand what actually is among friends?

  Certain rules among a parent and a child are well defined. This set of rules, when violated, makes us feel guilty like more than anything. Even though we know that, sometimes we tend to surpass them. Can we justify why we do that? Possibly we can and the reason can be silly, impractical or because we feel that is the only way left. Violating may sometimes be justified (be right or wrong), but hiding this act form our close associates is what makes it more severe. We may think that it’s better to keep others incognizant about the situation, but oblivion should never be a way to live.

   Rule book can be the best when we don’t want others to meddle into our lives. It’s all how we look into it. But giving others a chance before we add another clause into the book is worth it, especially we it’s against the ones who mean a lot to us. Sometimes it’s better to let go the rule book when a friend hides something from you, since if he had really felt it that way, he wouldn't have ignored the rule book in the first place. It’s better to stick on to the rule book when it is involved in making people around us happy. Sometimes when stepping out of the rule book is the only way, as we see it, it might be okay to let go. But the way we project our views onto others creates the difference. This applies to every aspect of life.

   We live in a society whose tacit or framed rules exits since ages and the consequences of trying to change or violate them has always cost a lot to for the men who tried (even if they were right, like Nicholas Copernicus). But fighting for what is right is different from arguing we are right. If listening to others can make them happy, it’s worth trying. Because I believe “KEEP OTHERS HAPPY, THAT IS THE WAY TO BE HAPPY”.

Mind…!!

As an incident goes in Mahabharata, Yudishtira attempts to drink water from a beautiful lake where Yaksha resided. Former was asked to give satisfactory answers to the questions Yaksha would ask else he claimed water would turn into poison. Out of the random questions he asked, there is a special one. Both the question and answer had a great impact on me ever since I heard about it, probably when I was 6 years old. Question was “what travels faster than wind?” and the answer Yudishtira gave was MIND. Of course I was too young to understand these when I heard it, but my mother gave an example that helped me to understand his answer. She said, “You can think about England and the very next moment about America, so mind is faster than wind”. Mind is not only fastest, it is most powerful too. It has ability to control an individual and hence his surrounding, province, state, nation and the entire world. Thus by conquering our mind, which is most difficult, we can conquer the world. Of course it is easy said than done, but not impossible.

 We have always told that there is a counter force within us that always projects the stuffs that are easy, no matter if it’s right or not, onto our mind. Controlling mind is nothing but suppressing this counter force such that mind proceeds in a way that is best. It doesn’t have the capacity to differentiate between right and wrong. However we can program our mind by constantly feeding in what is good. But we often surrender ourselves to our mind, especially when we are intrigued by what our mind imposes on us. In those times we ourselves loose our inherent ability to analyze things. Simple and well know example, we lie even though we are aware that it is wrong. If mind is not controlled prudently it might reach a level wherein we don’t even feel guilty for our conduct ever though we know it is exceptionable.

Our mind is like a huge reservoir of memories. Storage space of our memory is the concoction of various stuffs that are eclectically picked in the most random fashion. We believe that we don’t have control over the flow of memories, both inwards and outwards. We often remember the moments that we never want to even think about for life. Many a times we forget moments that are worth remembering for life. Indeed it is the most complicated mechanism that no one has understood till now. We can even erase the unwanted memory permanently by properly controlling the mind. If not erase at least we can prioritize the outflow by controlling our mind. Of course, it might considerable time, but it is not impossible.

Many of you are aware of the conscious and sub conscious levels of human mind. When we are asleep, sub conscious level will take over the charge of the conscious level. It’s because of this we don’t fall off the cot when we are asleep. It might have happened with us when we were kids, but now since we have toned our mind against it, we don’t. There is an urban legend, proved to be true that if you whisper something into the ears of the person who has just fallen into sleep (verge of transiting to the sub conscious level) that person hither towards it. For example, if you are very tired and want to fall asleep and snoring of someone is preventing you from sleeping. You can try and wake that person, not completely, but wake him off his sound sleep and whisper in his ears to stop snorting, it definitely works even though not in a first go.

Many a times you may expect people around you to understand what you are going through, as a right, when they actually don’t care. For instance if you are assigned to do anything in a group, you may begin to think it’s only you who is working and others are taking the credit for no reason. You may exaggerate it and impose it on them indirectly and begin despising them. At that time your mind thinks only from your perspective. You wouldn’t even want to know the fact. But what you actually need to contemplate is that “is that despise worth when group work is not the only thing??”. Mind inherently has ability to analyze and pass verdict quickly, from only one angle. Mind must be programmed to be more flexible. You might be frustrated if you are not wished by someone on your birthday. But is that necessary?? If you are frustrated, it is only your loss. Mind has to be trained to be calm for only you can take best care of yourself.

All the great men have always given importance to “mind control”. Guru Mahaveera says, “You can conquer this world, only if you have conquered your mind”.  “A man must elevate himself by his own mind, not degrade himself. Mind is man’s friend and his enemy as well” quoted by Sri Prabhupada. So is the importance of mind control. Along with training our mind to ignore the counter force, we must also make direct it to remain calm as much as possible. It is of sheer necessary to direct our mind, which is so powerful, in a right way.