Emotions

On a quiet night, sitting idle, doing nothing, I was thinking about the word ‘emotion’. As soon as this word struck my mind, the notion that followed it was they should be controlled. Then I thought do I really understand what an emotion is by the way. Soon I started searching and reading and guess what, the word that is so much into my mind started sounding a little difficult to me. After an hour of reading I managed to define this rather difficult word. Here is what I understood:

Emotion in simple words is feeling. It’s an outcome of the perceived favourability of a situation.

If you take a pause and think for a moment when do you not have an emotion? You would find it real hard to answer as we always have some emotion. While living, we always are under some situation and our minds definitely remain busy perceiving it. If we like it we get positive emotion like love, happiness, peace etc. while if we don’t like it we get negative emotions like fear, anger, sadness etc.

If you go back into your life, I am sure at some point of time somebody might have definitely asked you to control some emotion. If I make it clearer, definitely you were asked to control a negative emotion. Were you able to do that? Answer yourself.

Were you really able to control your emotion? I suspect you were.

Did that help? Certainly to others.

Did that help to you? May or may not be.

If your answer is NO then it is because in reality you never controlled your emotion. Probably you controlled the expression of your emotion. What is really needed to control the emotion is changing the perceived favourability of the situation which causes your emotion in consideration.

Simple example to quote is say “I get angry when my dad scolds me.” You get angry not because your father scolds you but because you don’t perceive that scolding as favourable for you. Probably you find somebody is attacking your freedom. If you do a minor tweak in your perception and try to redefine the favourability here, the anger would just vanish. Somebody scolding for your benefit is definitely favourable for you. Looks to be very simple but it is not actually.

What always holds us from controlling our emotion is this little tweaking.

Live Life to the Fullest

We all believe that we get only one life to live and we should live it to the fullest, but we hardly realize this. The first and the most important argument against this is what is the proof behind this statement that we get only life (even if there is one, at least I don’t know it). Let us assume that we actually get only one life then the next question that arises is what is meant by living to the fullest. Of course most of you would immediately think that it is such a simple question; simply enjoy the life. Do dream and do fulfil them in this life only. Do whatever makes you happy in this life. In fact some of you would even say that this means do whatever you want to do without assuming any restrictions on yourself. You never know when you might die.

But somehow I feel that this idea is really a selfish one.

First of all how do we confirm that whatever we are dreaming or we are assuming as our happiness is really what would make us happy. It is quite possible that whatever makes you happy makes somebody and trust me somebody close to you really unhappy. Even sometimes your dream might be somebody’s nightmare.

So for example if you dream to open a company which sells “good quality” liquor then surly the people drinking your liquor and helping you to fulfil your dream of being a millionaire by being successful in this field are not doing good to themselves in all the ways. Their near and dear ones might actually be railing against them and against you also.

Take another example and assume you like and dream of playing a seriously dangerous adventure sport which is a real life threatening game. You might be fulfilling your dream while playing that but what if you die while enjoying that game. This would leave your family crying forever.

Going one step further, doing any damn thing going against the laws and rules setup in the society is not a good idea as it makes neither you nor anybody else happy.
Then I tried to figure out what can then be or should be the real meaning of living life to the fullest.

I believe this should simply mean that you live full and always be full. If you are full at the end of your life then you would be very much satisfied at the time of dying. What I mean by being full is when you are full you are actually complete. This means you are not half of yourself and half of a fake identity created by yourself to make something work or to make some people happy.

This would mean that you never have double standards in your life and you never misrepresent yourself to others and yourself. When you are half you never know what can actually satisfy and make you happy. Your completeness includes not only your body but your mind, body and soul. Sp when you are true to yourself then you exactly know what you should do to calm and pacify your mind, body and soul.

Going one step further I would say your completeness does not end to you only rather it includes the people around you. It goes even beyond as it includes the trees, the wind, the clouds and the beauty that GOD has created around you. It includes the complete nature around you. Making any of these unhappy, won’t leave you complete or full.

If you are not full at the end of your life, you never lived to the fullest.

Happiness....A State of Mind........

Happiness, simply defined is the state of being happy. When we feel good, satisfied and contented with positive thoughts and emotions floating inside then we are happy. Looks so simple, isn’t it? Still if you ask most of the people in this world if they are happy, I suspect the answer would be yes.

On a little vague side, we all fail to realize what happiness actually is. When we get something that we wanted, we start feeling ‘happy’. But then for how many days do we remain in the state of that happiness. We fail to be happy for even a moderate length of period. A kid who wants a toy; gets it and enjoys it. We perceive the kid has become happy. But in reality the kid is not happy rather he or she felt good and achieved a state of happiness for some time only. Sooner his or her toy gets broken or lost, the happiness is gone. Surprisingly, even if the toy is not lost or broken, still he or she starts feeling bored after some time with the old toy and starts looking for a new one.

We adults are also like that kid. We get a toy we always wanted; we pretend to be happy for a small period of time. But we soon lose that state of happiness and start looking for a new toy.

Why there is nothing, which can keep us really happy and happy for a relatively longer period of time? I perceive the reason as what I said in the beginning. The happiness is a state and not an effect. So it cannot be driven or caused by some event or thing or a person. A state is established from inside.

Had happiness been an effect of a cause, two persons with the same cause should have been happy. But, unfortunately that’s not the case. A person who breaks his hand in a road accident feels sad about it, while another person who breaks his hand winning a World Boxing Championship feels happy about it. A thousand bucks make a poor guy happy while a rich guy looking for more doesn't feel happy with this. Why? Because in the second person’s mind the sense of accomplishment prevails more than the pain of broken hand. This implies that the happiness comes from inside. The external factors might only help us reach to that state of happiness; they can’t really make us happy.

If we move one step further, what if we can feel OK or not bad, if not good, when something happens against our liking. As the state of happiness has to come from inside, the state of unhappiness also has to come from inside. What if we can keep sense of a positive and bright future prevailing instead of the negative thoughts occurring due to the bad thing happening. Won’t that help us remain NOT unhappy? Logically it should. Why don’t we try then….?

'Truth' or 'Perception'

Perception, in simple words is the way of perceiving the things. Different people perceive the things differently. But what is more important is that every person finds his or her perception to be right and assumes it to be the ‘truth’. This raises the most important question in mind, Is there nothing that might be called as the ‘truth’?

We say something as truth only when most of us perceive that thing in the same way. And after some time, years or centuries, when someone comes and proves that perception wrong we all change our perception to change the ‘truth’. We can check the history to see this has been happening for years. Imagine what if we could use this way of thinking to our benefit.

Every day we feel bad about something. Most of the negative and sad feelings arising are due to our near and dear ones. The more dear a person is to us, the more does he or she hurt us. Most of us do have arguments or so called fights almost daily with our friends, colleagues, parents and spouses.

All these fights are due to differences in our way of thinking. We keep fighting proving our point. Just think how often you fight with your boss in the office proving your point. It won’t take long to think of the fight that you probably had today or yesterday morning with your spouse just proving your point. Unmarried ones might have argued with their parents over something. We all keep arguing for proving the ‘truth’ that too when there is no truth at all.

If we know that there is no truth at all, then there is no point in fighting over it. Imagine that the point on which you are fighting has not got any truth associated. If there is no truth, what would you like to prove? Obviously, nothing. Wait, there is the catch. We keep fighting proving our perception to be the truth.

If there is anything which looks like truth then it is, different people might have different perceptions. Now if that is the truth then why can’t we accept it? Why can’t we accept two different ideas and ideologies over some point? There is no harm in it. Though, there is a sure benefit. We will have lesser arguments resulting into greater piece of mind. Let me know if I made sense…..

Men and women, both live on the same planet

When I was a kid, I thought there are only two species existing on this planet, Animals and Humans. Some were animals, some looked like Humans and the rest were Humans.
Growing up, I realized Humans also have two species, Men and Women. While they both possess the attributes of humans, they are entirely different in their way of thinking and behaviour.

How?

The biggest difference is Men think that they are Men and Women are Women, Women think they are Women and Men are Men behind Women.

So while a Woman considers a Man running behind her is an achievement for her, a Man believes getting a Woman of his choice is an achievement for him. Surprisingly, the point at which a Woman’s achievement ends is the point where a Man’s achievement starts and then what an achievement a man tries to make out of it and what it finally becomes, all Men know.

Growing further, I came to realize that Men can be further divided into subspecies. They exist in three forms, “Unmarried”, “Just-Married” and “Really-Married”.

An Unmarried man keeps pretending that he doesn’t want to get married, but he gets finally, because he can’t get woman of his choice without getting married. Just-Married Man keeps pretending as the best Man for the Woman he got married to. Really-Married Man cares for every other Woman more than he does for the Woman he got married to. Unmarried Man keeps searching for a Woman who can accept any damn gift from him. Just-Married Man has a fixed woman to give the gifts of his choice. Really-Married man has no other option except to give the fixed Woman a gift of her choice.

Women can’t be categorized any further. They are always the Women.

Observing more closely, you can find very minute differences between the two species.

Men always assume that they look good; Women always want to hear that they look good.

Men like looking at Women, Women like looking at Men and Women. When Men look at Women they look at all the natural things. When Women look at Men they look at Natural and Artificial things. When Women look at Women they look at all the artificial things.

The way to a Man’s heart goes through his mind; the way to a Woman’s mind goes through her heart.

Men quickly start searching for logics to conclude; Women quickly start concluding to their own logics.

Men find it difficult to manage Men and impossible to manage Women; Women find it easy to manage Men and Women both.

A woman can die for a man; a man can die multiple times for multiple women.

Men want women to speak to them; Women want Men to listen to them.

Men find small happiness in big things; Women find big happiness in small things.

A Man worries about other Men staring at his Woman; a Woman worries about her Man staring at other Women.

A Woman can fight with a Man and a Woman; a Man can fight with a Man only.

While there are so many differences in their behaviour; there is one big similarity in both the species. All the humans, both Men and Women, want peace, love and affection. When a Man and a Woman get married, it is in their hands to enjoy these differences and still love each other. Otherwise these differences might result into real differences. Men or Women, whatever species you belong to, it is your choice.

What do you want to do…………………………….