Will power trumps all.

It was around 7 in the night. I picked up my violin to practice. Within 20 minutes into the practice, I got a strong feeling that I should stop playing. After getting that feeling, I could never concentrate on the playing. Couple of minutes later, I dropped it and moved onto something else. I always thought in order to get the best out of practice your immediate interest and will power should be aligned. Here, let me explain; whenever you do something there are two things at play, your will power and your immediate interest. Your will is what makes you take up a new activity. Your want to do something, be it dancing, painting, and playing guitar etc. is what will is. This will is unwavering. It won’t change unless you feel that activity is not working out for you. On the other hand, you have immediate interest which keeps changing from time to time and situation to situation. Sometimes, you feel the urge to do the activity. Sometimes, you are like, I’m not feeling like doing it today. That’s immediate interest.

When you mix these both you have four situations-

• Both will power and immediate interest are aligned positively.

                   This is when you want to take up an activity and you have the urge to do it right now. This is the most ideal condition which I think will contribute to the development of your skill in the activity. An example would be you want to paint and you feel like painting a butterfly and you go ahead and do it.

• Will power is positive but immediate interest is aligned negative.

                  This is what happens to me most of the time. I always wanted to play violin but I don’t find the time, I’m lazy or I just don’t have the right mindset to practice. I end up not doing anything and getting scolded for it by my teacher.

• Will power is negative but immediate interest is positive.

                  This I’m guessing happens when there is peer pressure. Like imagine your friends are planning a night out. You’re not interested to go out but you don’t want to miss out. You make up your mind to go and then figure out you actually had a better time than you expected.

• Will power and immediate interest both are negative.

                  One of the situations where I see this happening is when you badly want to make money. You work on a job you hate or something like that. Obviously I’m no one to tell but I advise you get out of this situation and pursue something your interests lie in.

The reason I laid out all these for you is because I wanted to talk about something that happened to me recently. After the usual reproach I got for not practicing enough, I came home. The next day, I took my violin, started practicing. After around 30 minutes I again got that same feeling. But instead of giving up, I relied on my will power to go on. I was working on a particular verse and I wasn’t getting it right. After trying a lot of times without much immediate interest something special happened. For one try, I got the verse perfect. Every note perfectly landed, every string perfectly bowed. I was at awe with myself. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to replicate that success, but in vain. I learnt one thing from this debacle. Will power trumps all. Even though I didn’t have the desire to continue I forced myself to continue and that produced a great result. I guess I finally understand Whiplash. When I watched that movie, I felt it was psychotic, both the student’s perseverance and the teacher’s pedagogy. But now I understand the value of will power. How even though Miles Teller’s character was severely injured he wanted to continue practice to get it perfect. I guess that’s the sort of dedication it takes to become someone great. That’s the lesson today. Even if your mind says no, force it to say yes on things that you have the will to do but not the immediate interest. The result will always be good. Hell, that’s what made me write this essay.

Extremes of madness

"Ma ma ma ma mad mad mad"

"Ma ma ma ma mad mad mad"

As Merriam Webster defines it, madness is either the state of being severely mentally ill or extremely foolish behavior. That in itself is too exaggerated. I mean madness can't be that bad. For me madness simply means unexplained behavior and/or haphazard emotions. All of us have had our phases of stupidity, irrelevant decision-making or what we term as "crazy stuff, man!" Those are just glimpses of what madness our brain can actually achieve. There are two extremities of madness. They are- the ‘psychiatrist’ and the ‘psychopath’. Before getting down into the dirt, let me give you Wikipedia definitions of each. Psychopathy is a personality trait or disorder characterized partly by enduring anti-social behavior, a diminished capacity for empathy or remorse, and poor behavioral controls. A psychiatrist specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders.

Too many definitions you say? Don't worry, that was just to setting the premise for the essay. Firstly let's take the side that you people are comfortable with. People with learned degrees in society with an eventful monotonous life are normally considered as model citizens. Psychiatrists are such people who I consider have better control of their emotions. Their study of human emotions makes them immune to the influences that normally emotions have on mankind. They learn about all the functionalities of the brain, which makes them scary and fascinating simultaneously. What's so scary you ask? Let me enlighten you. Good psychiatrists know how each emotion works. From various examples I've seen (though largely from a telly perspective) psychiatrists are capable of converting a feeling of simple infatuation into something like true love or amorous lust. The choice is completely theirs. Besides that, the first thing they learn in psychiatry is that each human is built differently and the same techniques may not work for two different individuals with the same disorder. That's why psychiatrists are always on the learning curve. Each patient of theirs is merely an experiment. And with the government laws as it is they will be exempt from any damage the patient causes unless they do a misdiagnosis which they rarely resort to. It is this power they have that makes them very scary. Due to their hold on emotions they take the Zero end of madness where there is no inexplicable behavior. Everything is calculated. On the surface, this absence of spontaneity may seem boring but for someone with megalomaniac tendencies this is the ultimate source of strength. I mean, to be able to manipulate emotions of others, this has to be the easiest obtainable super power. Period.

On the other hand we have the rejects of the society. The supposed lowlifes that the people think don't deserve to live in the society. The people who are not appreciated for the way their brain functions and instead discarded for their ghastly activities. It's not like they have an alternative option. Their brain initiates this uncontrollable desire that can only be quenched by surrendering to the will of its nefarious mind. This gives them immense relief. The more the desire is appeased the greater the desire grows. This uncontrollable desire can be quelled only by introduction of external forces; which are a rarity in itself. So, most of them end up on the wrong side of the execution chamber. But what interests me the most is how they handle emotions. Normal brains function in such a way that when you logically try to process that data you find so many redundancies and unnecessary emotions that which is not at all beneficial to your growth in any means. All it does is cloud your thinking and fragment your brain. Although time is the greatest defragmenter, it is too slow. In the case of psychopaths, all their emotions are sorted out. There is no wastage of processing power of the brain. All they feel are raw unbounded sentiments along with their crooked sense of righteousness. They exhibit no proof of having any true emotions, all they have is a spurious notion of free will [Don't we all?]. But this particular trait about them allows us to know the true sense of each emotion. Example gratia, we understand the true meaning of compassion only when we observe a psychopath bereft of it. We don't need a Shutter Island-ish secret base to pick each nerve in the human body to check what change that'll produce in the brain. All we have to do is find a psychopath with the right parameters and set him free and observe him. e.g.) a man bereft of sympathy, might most likely harm someone and feel no remorse, at the same time a man with an excessive empathy disorder might be able to relate to any murder victim and feel their last minutes of vivacity. This inexplicable flow of emotions puts them at the infinity end of madness.

Not everyone is lucky to be in the two extremes of madness I just described above. Mere humans like us fall somewhere in between; tangled in a prison of emotions, slaves to our own whims. Most of us can only "strive" to be in the two extremities. We ‘strive’ because that's where all the fun is; the former extremity much easier to achieve than the latter. Sigh!

Mom sweet mom

Hi all!
Well, recently I returned home and you quickly notice that the biggest difference between your hostel and your home is the presence of that earthly creature that is, your mom. :D There are many kinds of moms around. If you observe closely you can see these features in some mothers.

The mothers who smother-
There are mothers who smother their children with affection( please read: more than required). Yes, more than required. They always think the kids are the apple of their eyes and they need to satisfy any request the kid makes. I don't have anything against mothers who are like that but the kids either grow up to hate their mothers for doing that or become spoiled brats themselves, which is sad.

The one with the Meena Kumari Complex-
I love Matru Ki Bijli Ka Mandola for bringing out this concept, if you've watched it you will know what I mean. Or else here is the samosapedia definition, A tribute to the legendary actress Meena Kumari who was a beautiful actress who across her career portrayed the tragic heroine, who longed and suffered in her appearances in films, a stark similarity to her own alcohol ridden life. Just like her these mothers are always stuck in discoursing about their troubled past. Either talking about it is therapeutic to these mothers, or it is just that they find solace in tragedy-speak. I don't know!

The one who is old-
No, I don't mean mothers who are old enough to be grandmothers, no. I mean those mothers who desire to look young. I seriously don't understand the point of anyone who "desires" to look younger let alone mothers, because you "want to look younger" implies you think you are old. So, as long as you try on the cosmetics and treatments all you are seeing is a fake version of yourself. You are still old at heart. The problem arises when these mothers compete with their kids to look as young as them, the over makeup and accessories are a sore sight indeed.

The peculiar perfectionist-
We all know the perfectionist. The one who works tirelessly to ensure everything's right for the kids. Also, imposes oneself on the kids so they seem perfect to her rather than the kids' perfection perspective. This mom will have no issues with her conscience if the kid goes the wrong path, because she is clear that she has always done what's best she thinks for her kid. The peculiar part is the kids will be a perfect representation of their mom! :D

The make-believe Modernista-
Ha, this needs a little explanation. This kind of mom is totally weird. I'll give you some conversations that these mothers normally have. Imagine you have a football background in your laptop, this mom will remark, "In your age boys obsess about hot girls, and you are behind football." Imagine you say you don't do alcohol and the remark will be, "Really? Why? This is the age for youth to enjoy, you should have fun and all!" You get totally weirded out by these mothers because the way they say all that feels like they don't actually mean it. They are just saying it to appease the newer generation. These mothers overtly try to push themselves into the new trends just to keep up with the new generation even if it doesn't suit them.

The one child wonder-
Ya, those kids with one mother. Wait, lol! I mean those mothers with just one kid. I pity these mothers. Because if there are siblings, the siblings fill the void of brother/sister, friend, and if the sibling is elder then even the caretaker. If that sibling is absent, the mother holds the responsibility of being all that. This mother evades into those spaces of the kid that are not normally ventured into by mothers. This makes the mother become so much involved in the child that letting go of the child when the time comes becomes a bane, and this is actually bad for the child.

The others-
There are many other kinds too. There are supermoms who continue their careers whilst looking after their kids passionately. There is the abusive kind. The one who is depressed or even alcoholic, the kind I've seen only in the movies but I do believe they exist. There are others who find solace only in their children. Like Cersei Lannister from Game of thrones says, "The more people you love, the weaker you are. You’ll do things for them that you know you shouldn’t do. You’ll act the fool to make them happy, to keep them safe. Love no one but your children."

The reason I wrote about mothers is not because I have a mother complex, no! It just feels incredibly funny that mothers are such complex creatures that you wont find a normal one around. Or is it that we have to define normalcy for each and every mother? You might hate them or not, but mothers are essential.

Thats the beauty of it! :)

Unceremonious Endings

Hi All!
         Yes, the first post in my blog is called unceremonious endings. The irony was just pleasing, I knew then this would be the first topic in my blog. (A third attempt in starting one)

         Unceremonious endings can be anything that leaves this empty feeling in you that makes you think there should've been more. So, imagine you have a close friend.(Hopefully you have one!) You hang around him all through the semester and when the exams are over all you ever get to say is a measly "Bye". Seems too unsatisfactory right? You want to give a proper closure, because you know you won't be seeing each other for at least another 2 months. Or you are chatting up your boy/girl friend and suddenly he/she has to go off. You feel the need to give a proper closure to the time you had but one "Bye" is all you settle down to. Seems so unfair. There are many other instances of unceremonious endings too. This same dilemma is faced by Pi in the movie "Life of Pi". After all the fight for survival they went through together, the tiger just leaves him after they reach shore. It doesn't look back at him, doesn't acknowledge his existence, doesn't thank him for taking care of itself. All our severely dehydrated and famished Pi can do is stare. Sad. The serials Firefly and Outsourced ran only for one season. The former was stopped because not many people watched  it (but really, it wasn't advertised enough and the episodes were aired out of order)and the latter was stopped because of too much racism. I mean what the hell?

         It's such an empty feeling, right? I mean how can you even fill it? You can't go back to the moment and change it. Once it is lost it is just lost. Only time will make you forget it. Some of the other ways of closure is having a personalized farewell statement. That helps, it makes you think your counterpart meant the "Bye" instead of the usual dry "bye". In the movie Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, SRK makes the lovely Anushka Sharma say, "Hum hain rahi pyar ke, phir milenge chalte chalte!" ;) I don't know what to do for the tiger. Sorry, Pi! But both the makers of Firefly and Outsourced came out with movies with the same characters to put an end to the series. Sheldon of the Big Bang Theory in the episode The closure alternative recreates every situation where he had an unceremonious ending and finished each situation. That is exhaustive but if your brain agrees to it, well and good.

         You come across unceremonious endings all the time. It can even be as subtle as replying "No thing." when you are asked "whaddup?". Kills the life out of the conversation.
But then thats the beauty of it! :)