the feeling of being in love

Love, when it lasts, has a profound effect on us.  It makes us lose our rationale selves.  It makes us do illogical things we would not have ever imagined doing when sober.  Yes, sober.  Because love is intoxicating.  It brings out the best in us and also the worst.  Why does it have such a contrasting effect on us?  When does it bring out the best and when does it bring out the worst?

When love is conditional, it always has the potential to turn us irrational and violent, both in our thoughts and deeds.  It has the potential to bring out the worst part of ourselves to the fore.  This is not always the case though, but the potentiality exists of this happening.  We ordinary human beings cannot love unconditionally without rising to a level of consciousness which is beyond the ordinary.  It is impossible to love another human being unconditionally, except in the case of a mother’s love for her baby.  However, this unconditional love ceases as the baby begins to form an identity separate from its mother, as it begins to wean from breast milk as its primary source of food.

For us, unconditional love is only possible for the divine.  We can love the divine unconditionally, nothing else.  Yes, I know I am talking in very absolute terms and though a part of my mind says there are no absolutes in this universe, everything is relative, I still would use absolute terms, because that is my state of mind right now.  A little agitated.  Yes, agitated because of love.  Conditional love.  I have set so many conditions for love to exist that even a slight absence of one of them jeopardizes the whole situation.  It agitates me.  This is just a lack of emotional maturity, I know that, but the emotions are so overwhelming that no amount of rationalization can set my nerves to rest.

Time is the biggest healer.  And I hope it will heal my frayed nerves and emotional indigestion.  Amen.

Romantic liaisons

Just recently I came to know a few truths about a girl I had been becoming fond of.  They were revealed to me by somebody she claimed to be her friend.  This guy confided in me that he had been in a relationship with her and she had been in a relationship with his friend prior to him coming into her life.  She had even slept with that other guy (after a few months of speaking to him on the phone).

Naturally, I was quite hurt by this revelation, not because she had been involved with the other guys but because she had hidden these facts from me even though I had asked her about it.  I felt that was a breach of trust.  I felt that was a breach of expectations.  She had been a blatant liar.  I called her up today and gave her a piece of my mind.  I was rude for the first time in years to a girl, blatantly rude.  It’s not that I am a saint and she’s the sinner, but I think my offensiveness was due to the fact that she had been a liar.  I felt bad later.  The guy who had revealed everything to me about her called me up to justify her silence, to defend her innocence.  I felt how people could play games with their own minds, keep themselves in self-imposed illusions.  I don’t want to be rude to people, but neither can I be pleasant at all times.  There are times when rudeness is justified.

Well, I just formed a theory of human sexual behavior of my own after all that I have experienced in 28 years of my life.  I think adultery is hardwired into us because:

a.  The sex drive is as strong as the other basic biological drives.

b.  The desire to have a sexual partner is very strong.

c.  We humans are mostly attracted to qualities present in our mates and not to our mates themselves.

Let me explain (primarily for my own satisfaction):

a.  The sex drive:  It is one of the most primal instincts present in us.  The desire to have an orgasm.  It is as strong as the survival instinct, the instinct to give more priority to our own lives more than to that of others.  There are exceptions like the people who put their own lives at risk to save others, cases of extreme altruism.  However, these are exceptions.  There are exceptions to the priority of sex drive too like monks who vow to remain celibate for life.  However, for the majority of us ordinary men and women, the sex drive is irresistible when nature calls.  Our body takes control and leaves us with guilt and incomprehension at times.  We don’t know why we did it sometimes, but as always, the mind wants to stay in a state of harmony with the body and therefore devises ways of justifying our instinctive behavior.  Nevertheless, as long as the body is capable of engaging in sexual acts, it will.

b.  Sexual partner:  The desire to have a sexual partner is as strong as the sex drive itself.  It makes us see potential mates in every person of the opposite sex we come across (I will speak in heterosexual terms as I am heterosexual myself) and with whom it is socially acceptable.  However, sometimes the desire for sexual partner extends to persons who might not be socially acceptable but the desire is so great that we tend to seek gratification at any cost, even though we might know that it might not be a very socially acceptable decision.  We are all seeking sexual partners at all times, primarily people who still do not have a stable partner to gratify the sex drive.

c.  Attractive qualities:  Finally, we humans tend to fall in love with primarily the qualities present in our sexual partners and not with the partners themselves.  The partners might change, but we always seek the same qualities we are attracted to in different partners.  The bodies change, the characteristics that give the bodies an identify remain the same.  Therefore, we might get attracted to one person today and the very next day fall for another because we see the qualities that we find attractive in that other person.  Sometimes, we rise above this basic biological programming by being faithful to one partner in spite of having others around us with better representations of the qualities we seek, but that is mainly due to the need for stability.  We do not like change or chaos in our lives.  We seek stability and hence the need to have stable partners, but sometimes the desire to seek better representations of the qualities we seek make us unfaithful and our mind again comes up with ways to justify our actions because it wants a maintain state of harmony within itself.

Therefore, in conclusion, I have realized that unfaithfulness is a basic human quality which is mostly unavoidable.  Virginity is not a matter of choice in most cases but of circumstances.   Lastly, conceit is resorted to at times to get sexual partners and it is justified by the mind by its own strange logic.  Perfection is an illusion.  Expectations are bound to be shattered.

For a happy state of mind, have low expectations, do not seek perfection, and be in a state of acceptance.

JBL

the crimson moon

It had been Holi today,

The festival of colors,

And strangely as I walked past the dark shades

Of the Krishnachura trees on the deserted road,

I saw the moon, painted an eerie red,

High up in the sky, burning bright

With a strange crimson light.

Seemed like the moon had been playing Holi too

And the red gulal had been smeared on it.

I came back to my thoughts and felt why everybody

Had a mind with twists and turns like that of a jalebi.

That includes myself.

Why did I think the moon had played Holi?

It was a nice thought though.

Evolving mind

Of late, after having known Shoma now for a few months, I have begun to realize that people are more similar than different.  Basically, they are all the same if we peel away the layers of conditioning and prejudices that envelope us.  In trying to understand Shoma, as I usually try to do with all people I come in contact with, I have realized that what we all project is a result of our conditioning and nurture more than our instincts or nature.  These are some concepts which even I find difficulty putting down on to paper but I have the realization.  I feel inadequate when I am unable to explain it more lucidly. 

I think it is a result of my mind evolving.  New realizations are presented to me very now and then; they just dawn upon me.  Sometimes I don’t take notice of them and sometimes I do.  Sometimes I think deeply about them for sometime and then let them by as a passing thought, sometimes they affect me to the extent that I devote more of my thoughts to them.  I feel inadequate to think deeply.  I am a thinker as are most people, but a scattered thinker with no thought staying in my consciousness for more detailed and deep thinking, most of them being pushed into the subconscious.  Most people have a similar thought process.  They cannot hold a thought.  It is more like a random filmstrip with random images being presented to our consciousness.  I wish I was capable of more deeper thought; sometimes I want to do that.  Is this also something that we can teach ourselves like most of the things in life?

I have to learn to say NO.  It is one of the most important virtues to inculcate in myself now.  Say NO to all the less important things in my life that occupy so much of my waking time.  I need to say NO to them and spend time on the things I really would like to do.

This blog has begun to look more like a self-improvement guidebook.  Well, if it helps me bring the best out of myself, I won’t regret it.  I don’t want a readership for my blog.  I am content to write for myself and see if it helps me somehow.  I may start one for public readership soon.  Amen.

Hi 2010!

 

It’s been a few months now since my last post here.  My blog is crying for attention.  I won’t say I have been busy; that would be a very lame excuse.  I just haven’t had the inclination to write of late.  I have been more interested in reading.  One of my resolutions at the beginning of last year was to read some of the books that had been lying with me unread for quite sometime.  Yes, I just got through some of them and bought a few new ones and finished them up as well.  I finished reading Amitav Ghosh’s A Sea of Poppies.  It’s an outstanding piece of work by him, I couldn’t put it down until I had read the last page.  I finished 300 odd pages in about a week.  He is one of the best Indian writers in English I believe.  He has a terrific command of the English language and his prose is flawless, his characters interesting, and his story uncannily coherent and informative.  I loved reading the book and I eagerly await the release of his next book in the series.

I finished Robin Cook’s fast paced medical mystery.  Slumdog Millionaire a.k.a. Q&A by Vikas Swaroop.  Excellent reads, both of them.  I tried to finish the P.G. Wodehouse I had invested so much money in, but unfortunately, I couldn’t, I lost interest midway.  I found it too seeped in early 20th Century English culture which I found a bit difficult to follow, though I enjoyed his style of writing.  Read Chetan Bhagat’s Three Mistakes of My Life – fast paced and very enjoyable.  He’s a good storyteller.  He keeps it simple.  I like his style too.

Currently, I have a Jeffrey Archer to finish.  Again, finding it a bit difficult to understand the context as it belongs to early 20th Century English society, but I will read along and see how much interest I can generate.

P.G. Wodehouse and Ayn Rand will have to wait.  Atlas Shrugged needs to be finished, but not right now.

Well, coming back to how I welcomed New Year this time, I think I couldn’t have done better.  I worked, night shift.  Although that sounds very boring, I think it was a constructive way to step into a new year.  I had the mandatory party on the 3rd of January with the pada guys.  Alcohol and fags as usual.  One of my resolutions this year was to quit fags.  I have partially succeeded up until now.  I have managed to keep my intake to the minimum.  I am looking forward to cutting back on my tobacco intake.  It’s stickier than Fevicol for sure.  I am a veteran now of making resolutions and failing to live up to them.  I am not alone.

I had joined the gym last year in September but couldn’t keep up the routine and there has a gap of two months since the last time I attended gym.  I am planning to get back into shape (like I have been planning for years!).

Work has been shaping up quite well except for night shifts.  One primary reason for my not being a regular at the gym is night shifts.  I have a few ideas floating around in my head for sometime, let’s see what I can do about them.  I hope to figure out a way soon.  Money was something high on my priority list the previous year, and I think I have fared quite well in that department.  There are more milestones to reach, however.

Well, I think this much will do for a New Year entry.  More next time, which will be soon.  I need to put some of my original thoughts down into the written form before they are too lost to be retrieved.  And also just to be able to see what’s on my mind with my own eyes gives me a sense of purpose.  Blogging is good.

Until then…keep evolving.