Just don't follow others - have some reasoning

I always wanted to write something like this. It is very interesting topic. Read it and I am sure you will come to the same opinion like me. Anyway I am going to say something about common mans life (like you and me). If we look at people in this world, most of them lead similar life style. I mean most of them do the same things in their lives like others. I mention some examples in the next paragraphs.

When we are born, we are told by our parents to go to school. So we start doing first thing in our life just like all others. At least I can understand this concept. I mean we really don't know what to do or we may not have enough wisdom to take decision at that small age. So our parents send us to school. But funny thing is you know why they send you school. Simple they see others doing the same thing. I mean they want you to have good life. Again this good life means just leading some life like some employer. For our parents good life is nothing but the life of some one who has good job. Thats it. So they think that if you have good education you will also have good life like that employer. In India most of the people send their children to school with this intention. No one sends school to gain knowledge and wisdom to face the realities of life one has to face in his future. I don't think people would think about all these things before sending their children to school. Again don't misunderstand my opinion here. I am not blaming anyone. I am just pointing at our mentality of following others. This way I feel nothing happens. Everyone becomes follower but not leaders. But again you can point out one simple thing here. If everyone becomes leader who is follower then? You are right? This is just concept. Even if you don't try to follow, there is no guarantee that you will become a leader. But definitely you will become a success story.

All our life we do the schooling thinking that one day we will get some good jobs. Challenge me if I am wrong. I don't think so. How many of us think differently? Especially Indians don't think differently. We just follow others. We just do things what we are told to. It makes me really crazy. It doesn't mean that I tried to do something different. But definitely I have been thinking about it a lot and trying to change my self not to follow others. I will definitely try my best not to follow. Forgive if it hurts you, but I say that we are all like sheep.

After school all of us think that we should get jobs. Then we name it settling in life. Funny. Who said it is settling in life only if we get jobs. Thats the mind set of ordinary Indian student. Once we get some job, we are really satisfied with that and don't try to do something. I am sure everyone wants to do something great in their minds. But everyone is scared to take risk. Everyone thinks like what happens if something goes wrong. Again it is really funny and crazy to think like that because of one simple reason. We all think like that before we even try those things. That means we don't give a shot at anything. We are just scared to deviated from the generality set by other people, who are also followers again. I guess only few people try this and become greats. For example actors, sports persons, etc, are all leaders in their own profession. They all tried something different from normal people and achieved something in their lives. They created something for themselves for others to talk about it. That is the life.

What we do is we just live our life following others all our lives. Thats it one day before our death lying on the death bead with tears in our eyes and holding all our sons and daughters and their kids and relatives, we think that 'yes I had some life, good way to die'. Sounds like cinema. Right? Believe me that's what most of the people want to do. But somewhere in our mind it comes back. It says that what life I had. You start thinking that did I do what ever I wanted to do in my life. You know the answer. Answer is most of the times no. But ask Sachin Tendulkar. He just studied 10th class. He didn't do any software job. But at the end he is leader. Sadly truth is we are followers. We don't try to achieve our goals giving some stupid reasons. We are scared of outcome even before we try it. Sad life. Right?

Then the ultimate thing comes to my mind. You know what that is. Marriage. Most of us get married just because others do the same thing. We do it because our parents did the same thing. Do we know the reason for it? Come on. What a stupid question sreedhar that is? Who cares about the reason? Just get married and have children just like our parents did. Thats it. Then tell your kids to go to school and study well, get good job, get married, then thats like you settled in your life. Wow. Most stupidest thing in the world if think properly about it. I am not trying to judge you if you did the same thing. What I am saying is we all do these things without thinking anything. We all do these things looking at others. Especially looking at our parents and friends. Looking at other people in the society. Don't try to scold me here for saying the truth. If you are happy about it, thats fine. But if you are honest to yourself, I am sure you also wanted to achieve something great which is not like common person does. I always feel like that even though I am also just following others.

Till now I just followed others in my life. But not anymore. I definitely don't want to follow others anymore in my life. I want to do something which gives me happy, even if it doesn't give me money. Sometimes the good thing is if you want to do something different form others, you will end up being famous and money, even if you don't want to have those things. Thats the power of being different and not following others. Again it doesn't mean that you can do bad things not following others as most of the people don't do bad things. It has to be some example to others. What I am saying is you don't want to be there in others. You won't be there in others to look at the example if you try to be different.

Recently when I was talking one of my cousin who was getting married. Funnily he said one work would be finished if he got married. I am not trying to ridicule him here. But it made me feel really surprised. Is marriage some kind of work? Definitely not. Don't get married just because you are single and not able to bear the physical needs. Try to find reasoning which makes you happy, which makes you why you are getting married. Most of the people think that they get used to that person once they are married to each other. That means you just didn't give a thought about anything except your needs and you tried to follow others by marrying someone like others. This way both of them are followers and try to teach the same thing to their kids. Please don't do it. My some other cousin gave another reason. He said his parents responsibility would be over if he got married. What reason is that? So you want to get married just because of that. Come on. Try to find something more than that. Otherwise you will just become puppet in some game called life. Try to become a king, but not pawn or soldier.

Some time back I was talking to one of my childhood friends. We were talking about cars. By the way she has two daughters. I asked her how many cars they have. She said two and I said in future they might need two more for her daughters. Then she said something very common what we all heard in our lives. It seems she told her daughters to study well, get good jobs, then they can buy very good cars just like her and her husband. Immediately I gave her one advice. When they are in a position to afford something why don't they send their kids to some tennis school or something different like other Americans. I told her to show them some tennis matches, then if they like it, they will definitely ask to join them for training even if you don't tell them anything. Thats how it should be.

I know one thing for sure. I still remember one thing happened in my family long time back. One of my cousin aged 7 years started dancing to some song in front of lot of people. Right away my aunt felt embarrassed for that and told him to stop all that. I felt so bad for that and told her that was not the way she should tell her kid. I felt she should have encouraged him. Who knows? One day he can become someone like Michael Jackson or Prabhu Deva. Parents always try to stop their kids doing something different thinking that they would fail or it would embarrass them in front of other people. Thats wrong. Don't try to put your feelings on your kids. I understand that they are your kids. But at the same time you need to understand that they have their own personalities and it all depends on what they teach them when they are kids. If you try to make them calm and obedient, that is good. But not at the cost of their enthusiasm to do different things. Encourage them. They just need encouragement. Even if you can't give him financial support, it really doesn't matter. He will find something on his own with your encouragement. But please don't tell them the same things your parents told you just because of your feeling that you had some great life. Don't put him down whenever he tries to do something great with his life just because it is different from others.

I am not saying all these things wrong. But it might make you happy for a moment. But it doesn't give you ultimate happiness. If you can do something different with your life unlike most of the people in this world, at the end of your life you feel wow I did something in my life and gave an example to others. I am sure you definitely don't want to be part of those others. I definitely don't.

Lot of people say that what else we could do apart from getting married and having children. Most of the people think that everyone should do these two like all others. No. You don't have to if you don't feel it. You don't have to unless there is something that makes you happy. Unless you find some good reasoning. The other thing is lot of people will have kids thinking that their lineage would exist after his death. That is the reason you find for having kids. Bullshit. Most of the men feel proud when their wives give birth to his children. You know why? He thinks that he has proved himself to be a man by making his wife pregnant and giving birth to child. What a selfish reason. Even pigs do that. Every creature on this earth does the same thing. Don't be proud because of wrong reasons. I think you just did your duty and created one more creature on this earth. But you should feel proud when your teachings helped your kid achieve great success in his life. But definitely not for proving your manliness. Some people think that their kids are their blood. Who cares about your blood? Does it really matter if there is no proof to your blood. I guess definitely not. There are so many people living in this world, it really doesn't matter even if you don't have kids and your family name or lineage stops with you. If you think honestly it really doesn't hurt not to have your own kids. It really doesn't hurt not to have kids with your family name. You can always adopt children. I mean there are so many orphans in this world. Think about them. If you can adopt at least two orphans and give them life, then you did something different from others. At the same time make sure that you teach them something special and make them not to follow others.

Anyway I don't mean to say that all those things are wrong. I don't mean to say that you did bad if you did those things I mentioned above. But I don't feel bad to say that you are among the sheep if you don't have enough reasonings for what you are doing right now in your life. Hey don't feel angry and irritated because of this. Do you want to feel better? Then read this. I am also someone among these sheep. But what I am doing is at least thinking about it and trying to change myself. I hope you also do the same thing. I hope you find good reason to do everything and hope you try not to follow others and create something for yourself which can be shown as an example to others. I will try for sure. But again who knows what happens. Whatever happens I guess it really doesn't matter as I can at least feel that I gave a try. That feeling is definitely worth of trying something different.

cheers,
Sreedhar.

what are you? a carrot or an egg or a coffee bean

Title looks funny. Right? I can explain. Last month I got one mail (post) saying that I can become a member of Golden Key International Honor society. People with very good GPA can become members of this society. Frankly speaking I didn't pay that much attention. Even my friend suggested me to go for that. Anyway at the moment I decided not to join that society as I had to pay $70.00 if I want to. After a while one of my officemate explained the advantages of being a member of that society. So I thought one time $70 is worth. So I paid immediately online and became a member of it. After that I went to this ceremony on last Friday where they were honoring new members by giving some certificates. It was at 5:30 in the evening. I was kind of in dilemma weather to go or not to that function as I wanted to play racquetball with my friend. In the end I thought of going to that function with an idea of staying for half an hour and going to racquetball after that.

I went there and they asked me to fill some forms. After I did that I got a paper showing the names of people who became members of that society this year. It was kind of interesting to know that there were not that many students. That means I was one of very few people who got very good GPA. Cool. At the same time no big deal. Anyway we went inside and sat in our seats waiting for the ceremony to begin. I never liked the beginning of any kind of ceremony as people give speeches for long time. So I was hoping that people would finish their speeches in short time. But I got frustrated to see that ceremony didn't start on time. Because of some problem, they started it almost 15 minutes late. All this time my worry was whether my friend would be ready to play racquetball if I went late. Finally when the function started, the first person made me really worried an frustrated giving some stupid speed. It was so bad, at one point of time I just wanted to leave. Luckily when I was thinking like that, she finished the speech. Then some other person started his speech. It was not great, but at the same time it was not bad either. He made us laugh with some jokes. so it was kind of good even though he was not part of the speakers for the day. Finally I was relieved to know that there was only one speaker left before we could get our certificates. Then came the jolt.

Her name was Martha Woodman. She might be 55 years old or around 50. I didn't hear properly when someone gave introduction about her and asked her to come to podium. Then I noticed her having problems finding the podium. For a second I thought that she got confused or she got tense about her speech. But at the same time I didn't see any papers in her hand. That definitely made me curious. I mean lot of people always prepare their speech ahead of th event and read everything from the paper. I guess it doesn't look good that way. People don't feel connected to their speeches. As I didn't see something like that with her, I was ready to listen to her. The first sentence she talked was "The advantage of being blind is I don't have to carry any papers, but need to remember everything.". That's it for a second I was really shocked. Then I understood why she had problems in finding the podium. Then I started thinking whether she was born blind or had become blind because of some accident.

First she congratulated all the students for their achievement. Then after a while she explained why she lost her vision. She lost her vision because of some disease almost 6 years back from now. When she was on the bed in the hospital lot of people came to her and started saying good things to her to make her feel good. I guess it is kind of normal for people trying to comfort others when they are in difficult situation. It seems lot of people were saying it would make her strong. At the end of the day, it seems she got kind of frustrated to hear all that. She was not sure whether how she was going to deal with it. After that she took it as a challenge and started living her life. She is working as a professor at my university UVM. She is a professor in Business administration. It seems one day her sister came to her and started telling some story in their conversation. Here I want to say few words about this. Initially her speech was like any others. But after a while I couldn't turn my face from her. I was leaning forward as though I would miss something if I didn't do that. It was really interesting. Same with everyone in the auditorium. I explain the story in my own words here.

There were three things. First one was a carrot, second one was an egg and the third one was a coffee bean. Someone put all these things in to a steel pot. Then water was added to all those three pots. After that those 3 pots were heated for almost 20 minutes. Finally the heat was turned off. When checked, carrots became mushy and soft, inside of the eggs became hard and the third pot became full of coffee. So first carrot was hard, but in the end it became soft. At first egg was hard on outside and soft inside. But at the end inside of the egg also became strong. With coffee bean, all the water was turned into coffee. That means in the face of difficulties and hardships carrot gave up by becoming soft. From outside it looked like it could handle anything by being hard until it faced the real difficulty. Whereas egg looked strong from outside and soft inside with shell being hard and the material inside the egg being soft. That means it looks strong from outside, but soft inside. But going through difficulties the inside changed into hard thing. So egg could change herself and stand the difficulties by becoming hard inside. That means it changed herself into hard from soft. Whereas in the case of coffee beans even though they are put into water and heated for almost 20 minutes they never gave up and gave back coffee with great smell. That means coffee beans fought the difficulties and tried to be strong and good even in the case of difficulties. So all people belong to different cases I explained here. Most of the people are like carrots. Some of them are like eggs. But very few people are like coffee beans.

Anyway, she said her sister told her that she was proud to have coffee bean in her family. I felt she was absolutely right. It was kind of eye opener for me. I know for sure that lot of people, including me, start complaining even for small problems in our lives. But looking at people like her, I feel our problems are nothing. I have everything in my life. Even though I have a some health related issue with my spine, I guess I am ok to do everything. It is kind of frustrating to live with some kind of inconvenience all the time caused by pain. Still compared to her problem, mine is nothing. More over she is like a coffee bean as she is trying to do good to others by being strong. She is working as a teacher in the university. So she is giving example to the society. Whereas I am frustrated and depressed because of my problems. I am sure I don't want to give up like carrot. I guess I am becoming strong like egg in the story. I am learning to change my self to stand difficulties. I want to be like a coffee bean. People might think that one can not become a coffee bean, it has to be a born quality. I don't think so. People comment on so many things just like that as though they have plenty of experience. Believe me. You can't do that. Don't make any opinions unless you have had experience with that. So what I think is we can all learn through by going through rough time and still can emerge as winners. We can all become coffee beans. I don't know about you. I will definitely try to become a coffee bean.

Life has become materialistic

First I want to mention what led me to write this today. Since two days I have been trying to go out of my home to do something. I couldn't play racquetball continuously for 3 days. I couldn't find anyone to play with me. Still at least I wanted to go to gym, so that I could play this game on my own. I couldn't go to the gym. You know why? Simple reason is I don't have a car. You can ask me what it has to do with having car? Yes thats true. I could easily walk to gym if the weather is nice. First of all here it is getting very cold these days. By the way it snowed well two days back. So you don't feel like walking for 30 minutes to go to the gym. Basically what I am saying is I need car for everything.

Here in USA it looks like we have everything. Yet we end up not feeling satisfied. In my case it is little different. Sometimes I feel like doing something. But again I can't do anything except sitting at home as I don't have car. In India I used to walk for longtime when ever I got bored. Here it pains to walk with all the heavy clothing. Still we feel the cold. I always want to play some game, especially racquetball as it is indoor game. But again we need one more person to play. Right? Here comes the problem. Most of the time I don't find anyone. It's really frustrating.

Anyway the point is in this so called developed country it is kind of compulsory to have a car. Every store is located at the outskirts of the city. I think I could easily walk to all these places if it is not cold outside. At the same time I can't afford car with what I make. If I buy a car, then I can't save anything to send back home. One more thing is we end up having some debt because of this car. More over we may need to spend lot of money on repairs as we buy some kind of crap for just 2 or 3K.

I have seen lot of people having everything, I mean every materialistic luxury. Still I can say that people are not that happy here compared to people in India. Of course I know that in India people are having different problems. The thing is in India people always worry about future. They always try to have savings for the future. I guess here people don't do that. Sometimes I used to wonder how everyone here could afford so many luxurious things? I mean even people with low salaries buy lot of stuff. You know how they do it? Simple. They depend on credit. I mean everyone goes for credit cards. That means here in America everyone has huge debts on their backs. So most of the time they buy stuff with others money. In the end they keep paying all that debt all their life. My feeling is whatever you buy with credit card, it doesn't make you happy. I think it might make you happy initially. But later you start regretting when you are paying minimum payments on your credit card. It goes on for ever. In India you don't see common people using credit cards. Even normal employees don't know anything about these credit cards. So they can buy stuff when they have money, I mean their own money. If you buy stuff with your own earning, then it makes you feel very happy. You don't have to worry about these monthly payments.

Still it is definitely worth to buy certain things on credit. Especially car. Lot of students who come here for studies think that there is no need to have car if they can live near university or where there is good transportation. But most of the times everyone feels that it could have been really good if he had a car. It might be because of so many simple reasons. Sometimes you want to do grocery shopping. You want to do it right away, but you know that you need to catch bus. Ok you go and check for the bus schedule. That's it. You find it there is no bus right away and you need to wait for one hour. It makes you feel damn frustrated. The point is you feel motivated to do so many things. Still we forget that we are dependent on so many other things like transportation, etc. In the end by the time there is bus we lose our motivation. Then all that week you have to face more problems because of this simple thing, like spending more money on food outside.

Right now I am really frustrated as I am not able to move out of the house. I want to go for a movie tonight. But I know for sure that I can't as I don't have a car. I want to play racquetball. Again I can't do that as I don't have transportation to go to gym. Ok. At least I can watch a movie on my TV with DVD player. Great finally I found something to kill time. But again I miss something. TV is just not enough to watch movie. I need DVD. Shit. I need to go outside to get DVD. aaa God. Funny thing is I have TV, very good home theater system. It is really useless with out DVD. So I see only one thing now. I need car. But I can't afford it. It drives me nuts.

Then what is the solution? I need to find some solution to get out of this frustration. Yes, my roommates have cars. I can ask them for a while. May for long time. But it is kind of depending on others. Why should I do that? I guess it is better to walk rather than asking from someone. There is dignity even though there is pain involved. I like to watch movies a lot. There is one movie theater in the downtown area. It shows good movies. But the problem is you don't find all new releases. If I can make myself feel that it doesn't pain to walk in the cold, then I guess I can do any of these things. If I have patience to wait for the bus, then I am sure I won't complain. When I know for sure that I can't afford the car, I need to make sure that I have my solution to feel that I don't need car to do any of these things. I need to make myself feel I don't have to depend on others. Have some good plan and follow that. I am sure I won't be able to do everything. Still I can do at least most of the things.

I think lot of people are scared to walk in the cold weather thinking that it pains a lot. I mean fingers, nose, ears, etc start hurting really bad if we are there outside walking for longtime. Still we can deal with it if we have proper winter clothing. The most important thing is or trick is not minding the pain. If you think that it can't hurt you, then it definitely can't hurt you. I am sure even thought if pains, because of your thinking it makes you feel less. So the trick is not minding. That's it. Let's see how it works.

Two days back I started walking when it was snowing outside. It felt so good. I guess I walked for almost one hour. In the end I could feel slight pain in the fingers. But again I wasn't wearing proper clothing. So no complaints. But one thing made me feel extremely happy. You know what it is. After long time I saw a movie with out going in the car. At least I felt that I could do something without having car. Now I want to continue this.

I think if I start thinking that everything makes my life miserable, then even small things make my life really miserable. But if we think even failures can't hurt us, then nothing could hurt us. I think it is all attitude. If we are not scared of the outcome, then definitely we can do anything. I think I am getting used to that kind of attitude. I am sure I am feeling much much better now. I will definitely make myself more stronger towards lot of things in life. The most important thing I need to realize is no one can hurt me. I definitely make sure that no one can hurt me. Do you know how to do that? I know. Simply not giving any chance to others. Cut it off if you notice that someone is taking control over you, either emotionally or physically or professionally. In the end it really doesn't matter just because of one simple reason. If you get hurt, you are the one feeling pain, but not others. Always remember it.

The other most important thing we need to realize is we can do lot of things without depending on these materialistic things. Once we start depending on these things, they take control over you. Make sure that you can do different things without depending on materialistic things. One can feel happy with small things. So try to find them. I am trying to find them right now. You also try to do that if you don't want to get frustrated later. Good Luck.

cheers,
Sreedhar.