Reality... really?

What is reality? Everything that actually is. What about our perception of reality? Is there a common perception of reality? Or does that perception vary from person to person? We all discuss that each person has his own perspective. No doubt then, it should logically follow that there exists no common perception of reality - unless, of course, we have failed to apply logic as it should be applied.

Many wise men are known to have spent their lifetimes seeking universal truth. I would assume that means that they want to know reality(as it is), instead of just another perception of it. The biggest conundrum for me would always be - how would you know when you've reached? If you define a goal that you're headed towards, how do you know it's not tainted by your perspective? If you haven't defined a goal, well, then it doesn't matter anyways.(Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland?)

Now, what is anyone's perception of reality? In short, everything that we experience, with all our senses - some of them known, some not so well known(the sixth sense?). Was my dream real? I would suggest it indeed was. But not in the same way as my narration of the dream that I typed into my laptop one night after waking up. What makes the two realities different?

A dream is indeed real. I definitely perceived myself walking through the jungle and talking to a tree. Only, the tree existed in a reality that is not in front of me now - a reality that appears not based on the materialistic world we deal with, or with the five senses we normally rely on. In fact, I believe that tree still exists somewhere. My mind just made a journey to a world that I can't take anyone else to, because I reached there randomly. If I knew how I got there, I would tell you, and you might probably go there too, and see exactly what I saw, and heard, and felt.

As a child, I used to sit on the staircase, and imagine I was flying a fighter plane and shooting down "the bad guys". I had no steering wheel, no joystick. Just my closed eyes, and the vivid scenes running through my mind. The planes are always there, the runway's always there, just waiting for me to hop in and fly out. I could see them. I felt the wind blowing against me. I had a chill run down my spine as I gained the speed to take off. You can't tell me that's not real. I'm sure just reading those lines conjured up an image in your mind!

The big problem with reality is, we often start to get carried away with everything we perceive, and think everyone else should perceive it the same way. For instance, candies are sweet. How do you know what "sweet" feels like for another person? You don't. Yes, it is true that it triggers roughly the same taste buds for both you and the other person. That may not be the same experience for the other person. Lets move to another possibly more comprehensible example - law. There are many innocent people who get convicted because of circumstantial evidence (mistaken to outline reality), when there really was a big missing link that nobody found and brought to light. Once a man is convicted, it's difficult for anyone to believe his story, no matter how true it might be. In other words, again, your perception of reality, could be a far fetch from the reality.

Where is all this headed? It's simple. Each of us has a perception of reality, and should experience it anyway we like. We could try to share the experience, but we should be wary of the fact that the experience we give another person may or may not be as pleasant as ours. Every now and then, we might come across someone that appreciates our point of view. But we should keep in mind, that true reality consists of everyone's perceptions combined. The fact that each of us perceives, whether the same way or another, is indeed, real.

Trust - Gain versus pain

I'm inspired to write this post as a follow-up to a topic I recently discussed with a couple of friends, on Twitter. And this post is most certainly dedicated to the two of them.

To start with, I'll just lay down the points of discussion, numbered to make them easy to refer to, later in the post...

1. To trust is to be vulnerable.

2. To trust blindly, is to ask for trouble.

3. If you trust someone, you give him/her the power to hurt you.

4. When you trust blindly, there's much higher risk that someone you trust will actually hurt you.

When you trust, there are two main elements involved: the guarantee that you're expecting, and the guarantor. There has to be a close tie between these. (Please assume for the purpose of our discussion, that the guarantor doesn't explicitly communicate that he provides the guarantee. Also assume, that what you're trusting is something positive. Not, for example, "I trust that the bus will be late.")

If the guarantee is delivered, we stand to gain, since things happen the way we hoped for. Otherwise, we stand to lose. This justifies point 1 above and, partially, point 3. I'll come back to the reason for saying "partially" later in the post.

Now, what are the situations in which the guarantee is not delivered? Maybe the one we trust can't actually do what we expect. Lets say, I trust my friend borrows my Ipod, and I trust him to return it in the same condition, but he returns it with scratches. Or I trust a friend to reach on time for my birthday party, but he gets stuck in traffic and reaches when the party is almost over. Possibly, the only way to handle these scenarios is to develop a kind of inbuilt analysis of whether someone can be guaranteed to do something. It's still not really a guarantee, though, because there could be a lot of unknowns involved. When I understand that there isn't a high certainty the event happening, I plan for the non-occurance mentally, and also try what is known as "risk mitigation". If Alfred stays on the other side of town, and I know he can't start from office earlier than 6 PM, there's a chance he'll get stuck in the traffic on the way, and I should be mentally prepared to move forward with the party, and also put aside some cake for him so that it's not all over when he reaches. In other words, I trust that Alfred will "do his best" to reach my party on time, but may not be able to. This is where I say point 3 is partially true. Agreed, Alfred may not "do his best" and may get hooked to some girlfriend on the way, and hence be late. But if I know Alfred is inclined to do that, I probably wouldn't be surprised (or "hurt") when I find out. :)

When we trust "blindly", we just presume that everyone will understand the implicit "guarantee", sometimes even when there's no scope for such common context. Whenever we hear "I expected him to do X, but he didn't" ringing in our minds, and feel hurt, the things to check for are: Does he know that I expect X? Is it feasible for him to do X? Another important question is: Would he want to do X? Lets suppose you're travelling alone in the train with a lot of luggage(generally a bad idea, but anyways...), and you want to take a quick stroll down the compartment. Now, you might have been chatting a lot with the nice family that sits next to you, and might be tempted to request them to "watch over" for a few minutes. And they might agree too, but they might not really be in much of a position to take care of your luggage, or even want to do so. If someone picks something out of the front pocket of your bag, they might not even notice, and it might be in your best interest to lock up luggage, chain it, and then take your stroll. Of course, the new assumption here is that someone cutting chains or breaking locks is quite likely to catch other passengers' attention. :)

Another time when we tent to trust "blindly", (and the more common one) is when we have known them for a long time. Most of us trust our families blindly. Sometimes, this does crop into unfulfilled guarantees("Dad, why didn't you buy me an Xbox for my birthday?" :)), but we don't "lose out", since we know it was just a misunderstanding and not an ill intention. We talk to them and clear out the misunderstanding. Also, one could argue this is not blind trust, and instead a relationship built over time, where we know how they are likely to react to almost any event.

We also tend to develop a lot of trust for friends that we've known for a long time, and expect a lot of unspoken understanding, just like we did with our parents. There's always a likelihood that this kind of trust can go "blind" at some stage, where the friends keep making assumptions and not communicating. And when that happens, the chances of your friend hurting you can actually go quite high, because the expectation of "guarantee fulfilment" is very very high... sometimes because you didn't understand the friend's intentions right, sometimes because he didn't know you had the expectation.

In short, don't trust blindly, and you'll be much better off. Don't trust anyone for anything and everything. Make sure you trust them to do the specific thing you expect from them. If unsure, try to make sure somehow, or maybe lower your expectations.

Living on the edge!

This blog post is dedicated to dk, who asked me an interesting question in the comments section of the previous post. It is likely that I may not answer the question completely, but here's my take on it. :) For a purely moral point of view, I'd point you to my other blog which I'm trying to slowly and steadily build up and present what might be a basis for an individual to develop his own moral system.

Living on the edge can be a philosophy of life. Have you ever got onto a roller-coaster ride? If you have, you have a very small glimpse at the kind of pleasure it might give you. Very small, though. Because there's a slight difference between a 5-10 minute ride, and your whole life. :)

If the brain in conjunction with your heart, guides you to live life on extremities, then you're probably doing fine. As long as, after every experience, you evaluate the consequences, your brain is likely to take corrective measures. For instance, if you slip while handling a crazy snowboarding trail, and get fractures, you'll take care next time. Or, at least, you'll know to be more careful when you take out someone else with you, and prepare them for the situation.

Picture this: You must have seen lots and lots of the Guinness records. If you imagine, these people can't achieve what they've done without taking major risks. And, at the end of the day, did they really need to take the risk? You and I can't judge that, because they live to see the results.

Following the heart really is important. And, we shouldn't forget... Id, ego and superego would play their role in both your mind and your heart. (Unless you stick to the old school of thought that says it's scientifically only the brain that influences both emotions and thought, not the heart. ) This means your train of thought would be something on the lines of:

Id: Lets race on the road!

Ego: Ok, we can't overtake this guy with what we've got under our hood.

Superego: We should slow down a bit, before we cause someone harm, or we should be very alert to ensure we don't.

Not quite there, but you get the idea. (And, if I got my terms wrong, I'll remind you I didn't have sociology in my graduate course. :P) But what's most important is not just whether you live on the edge or not. What can change things is whether you can clearly understand what your heart says to you when you listen. And for that, I think each of us has a moral system that we build up over time. How do we build it up? My other blog tries to answer just that, but has a long way to go.

The heart, moods and... life!

(This post is dedicated to someone who had an unusual Orkut profile name, that inspired me to write this post. If you're the one and you're reading this post, you know it's you.)


The heart... the supposed source of emotion... holds a mystery within it. Actually, as we've been taught at school, it's the brain that holds the mystery. but the heart expresses it. I'm talking about the times when you feel a tickle in your chest, and you have a strong feeling that it's from your heart. A tickle that could mean many things... your heart beating fast, or your sudden noticing that your heart is beating softly.

Scientifically, we now know that there's more linking the heart and the brain than we used to think. In the sense, the heart and brain actually talk to each other, and each influences the other. No, I'm not about to talk science here. You can find that information elsewhere. I'll confine my scope to my perspective about things.

Listen to your heart. I'm sure you've heard that said so many times before. But here's some philosophy around why you should... During life, we go through our share of experiences. We start to form a sequence of one event turning into another. We take actions, and we see their results. We have people who'll support us, people who'll blame us, and people who just don't care. No matter whether what, good or bad, happens, there's only one thing that you can always be satisfied about... that you did what your heart told you, because that's the one thing that has built out of your own experience... because you had a sense of what was the best way to react. And nobody can ever promise you that they are sure what the results would have been if you had done things some other way. But always learn from your own decisions and their consequence. It'll help you when you listen to your heart the next time.

Lets your moods swing. Yes. Mood swings are nice. They're awesome. They do a lot of good to you. Every mood you go through is a mental transformation. It makes you think in a totally different way. That means you experience life itself differently. Someone who is always happy or always sad... I'd say both of them are missing a whole lot. You have one life. Live it. And the only way to live it thoroughly is to understand the beauty of contrast. The reason why you see, hear, feel anything around you, is because one thing looks, sounds, feels different from another. So you can "differentiate" between them. It's the same with moods. You go through more moods, and you know how you can enjoy one versus the other. However, don't let your moods kill your life. Moods result from experiences. And you may miss some experiences if you're not in the right mood for them. If you can experience mood swings, and not go overboard with them, that's the ideal situation. Also, keep in mind.. some moods are to be just experienced, some moods are to be shared. And some to be held within, you say? I don't know. I'd expect everything has to come into the first or the second category.

Enjoy life. I would say that's something that you should make a habit. It doesn't translate to the same as "Always be happy" or "Always be satisfied", or any other similar state. It's an emphasis of the fact that every moment is precious. At the cost of sounding like a dialogue from a very popular movie... There is no secret ingredient to life. Your life is special by the very virtue of your considering it special. That's all there is to it.