Reading and writing helps to expand our experiences & perspectives.
lifestyle
Expanding Experiences
Have you ever wondered how to broaden your own experiences?
Our creativity is often tethered to our imagination which in turn depends on our past experiences.
By venturing into unfamiliar territories, interacting with people from different cultures who speak unfamiliar languages, delightfully shocking our taste buds by tasting the local cuisine, discovering new genres of music and their cultural contexts, walking through an unfamiliar city, observing different lifestyles and traditions, delving into novels and movies from diverse genres and geographies and much more of such activities which disrupt our usual patterns of thinking and interpreting situations, ultimately expands our perspective and hence bursting the bubble of our imagination.
Happiness compared
When everything around you is pitch black, even a dim dynamo light was enough to guide the bicycle. In today’s world of focused high intensity neon lights, even the most luminous headlight is insufficient for the vehicle.
Similarly, when a person’s resources are limited, he finds joy in small things. As the commodity grows in value, so does his standard of satisfaction.
However, it is incorrect to assume that the poor or someone far below your level of success is deeply unhappy and living a miserable life. Nobody can escape from happiness. It transforms from one form to another.
Sadness arises from comparison. As Montesquieu said this 300 years ago,
“If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”
Shelter
Have you ever paid a close attention to the ad billboard, or brochure of any housing projects?
They are almost sure to have a non-native, pale skinned model exercising in a gym.
Or a happy white family with blond haired kids playing around.
Or a healthy elderly couples (non-local) walking in the exotic mini park within the premise.
I have hardly seen any middle class, dark-colored humans, in the advertisements of these concepts yet.
What is it that these builders and promoters are trying to convey here?
Are they exploiting the upper middle class mindset of society, which has assumed the superiority of the western lifestyle on self? By having western essence in the advertisements, is promoter trying to deliver the lie of comfort and delight to the deluded individual?
Hundreds of projects around Bengaluru are in shambled state within 10 years of the erection. They stand, as the sheer evidence, for the false promises imposed on the fantasy of ownership.
Road
The road is the reflection of the vivid differences of different lifestyles. Everyone with different form, style, speed, luxury, pain, and purpose. Some on two-wheels, some on four. Many share their journey, few on their own. Someone going slow and some in crazy speed. A few enjoying the journey, some hoping for the end. Road is like time.
Though the journey of each start and ends at some point, the road itself doesn’t end.
Monkey Trap
Monkey trap is one of the simplest method to catch monkeys and somehow it has proved to work every time.
Method is simple. Take a hollow enclosure, a can, or an empty tender coconut shell and make a hole of size enough for the monkey to put its hand inside it. Place a banana or any eatable inside this to lure the monkey. Keep it accessible to the monkey.
Eventually a hungry monkey comes, sees the food inside and puts his hand inside. Holds the banana and tries to take its hand outside. Alas! The hole isn’t big enough to allow the monkey’s fist holding the food. Monkey doesn’t realize this and goes into panic mode. While the focus of the monkey is to escape the trap, it forgets that it has to let go of the food it is holding to save his ass.
Monkey trap is highly relatable to the human clinging to that single idea and believing that solution should be around it and getting trapped inside it forever.
Maybe the real solution is to empty the cup and let go of what we already think is true. Looking at the world with the fresh perspective might be the only way to escape the monkey trap.
Fun, Defined
Found above interesting quote from one of the blog posts of famous author Mark manson.
Since the revolution of social media, it has become a trend among all generations to mandatorily have fun or at least express that they are having fun.
People of our age have suddenly become wanderlusts.
WhatsApp has brought out many naive singers and dancers out of 60+aged parents.
Dancing and performance at a family event has become a ritual.
Doesn’t matter if they know how to dance, you shouldn’t judge them because they are having ‘fun’. They are ‘living their life to the fullest’.
If you are shy and introvert, you are ‘missing’ too much of life.
It is sad how measures of ‘having fun’ is being defined by social networking and agenda driven, commercial embedded cheap media contents.
Sitting on a rock bench, and quietly observe the leaves rustling, listening to a random tune from a bird hidden inside some invisible nest, calmly hearing all the chaos out there in the world can also be fun.
Spending the whole day doing nothing but lying on a couch, reading a few pages of a book, can also be fun in its own way.
Things we do on any typical day need not be labelled as ‘fun’ ‘boring’ ‘mundane’. They are just the way they are.