I walked out of the office having made too many sarcastic jokes again. I sat down in the train, in time as usual to find a spot. Trains fill up quite easily around six o’clock. I was thinking it had been a while since a conductor had come to check my ticket. The man entering the train 20 minutes later must have thought the same thing. When the conductor arrived, he just tried to explain as best as possible that he had been in a hurry and forgot to date his ticket, one of the deadly sins in train riding. The conductor caught him quite easily asking him if the same had happened on his way here as the man was on his return. Of course, he did not have a proper reply and the conductor gave him an extra highly priced ticket.

More or less, he knew he was wrong and the conductor right. However, he chose to play the game like an Italian soccer player meeting the Netherlands at the European Championships. First, he did his best to get around it, second he demanded empathy and thirdly he issued cold threats.

He let fate take care of him. Eventhough, he had much control of the situation.

Why he couldn’t admit being wrong still baffles me. “Suck it up!” I heard someone say in my head. “Die in the harness.” It is better to admit defeat in honor and dignity than to run away from truth while pointing at others. I think they call the first “a gentleman” and the latter… Not sure.

A few seconds before the following paragraph had popped up on my iphone:

“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population had abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that only ended with the dawn of space exploration.” via Kottke

I remember one early morning at Audarya last year when I stopped while walking to the bathhouse and looked up. Hundreds or thousands of stars lit the sky. Very little light pollution. Years ago I was on a school excursion and we looked at the stars too and picked out a few well know stars, like the pole stars. Years later as well, I was sitting on a veranda at the Mediterranean and looked up to the stars. Magnitude. That’s what I thought. And it forced me to think and be humble.

And so I believe introspection leads to a better quality of life, and a less random one too.

“Drinking has so become the norm that those of us who choose not to, whether for a day or a lifetime, set ourselves apart from the crowd. If someone asks and I attempt to give an honest answer as to why I don’t drink─because I’m trying to lose weight, because it makes me feel out of control, because I feel like I’m a better person when I don’t drink─they often hear my responses as accusations, like I’m saying there’s something wrong with them for drinking, when nothing could be further from the truth… I’ve discovered that I may not always like the person I am sober, but grappling with her, facing her with all her flaws and insecurities, is preferable for me than trying to blot them out with another vodka cran.”
- Rachel Kramer Bussel

Do what feels good in your heart and makes sense in your head. The New Year period is a good time for reflections.

“If we focus on everything, our job is nothing. I dumped things that are essential to some jobs. But just by virtue of the fact that I dumped a task, I declared it nonessential to my job. When you have too much on your plate, and everything seems essential, decide on a job change. Right there.”

I personally deal with this all the time. If I don’t prioritize, I end up getting involved with so many projects and when I do so, I actually manage to do nothing at all. Our time is limited and so we got to make a choice about what is worthwhile. What is essential to us? The googlization of the world has brought the world at our fingertips and with it brought endless choice and potential. But there is no escape to making choices and doing so will only increase the quality of our life. I’m a strong believer that if we follow our heart, our own path, money will follow.

I have written about networking before and also linked to Keith Ferrazzi. In this two minute clip he explains how we can turn an initial contact into an ally. Very simple, but often overlooked.

“The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can’t plan your career because you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you’ll enter, what companies you’ll work for, what roles you’ll have, where you’ll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the world. You’ll change, industries will change, the world will change, and you can’t possibly predict any of it.”

When you are lost in identity, you try to hang on to whatever you have and whatever is foreign is a threat. But when you are not lost or searching, whatever is foreign imposes no threat anymore. Basically, if you are confident of yourself, it is less easy to feel warped.

While reading Rebecca’s blog, Modite, last week, I found her say this:

“I studied design in college and found that given the chance to design anything at all in the whole wide world, the canvas will remain blank. Told to design something with a right angle, or without connecting any lines, or including three circles and your mind will turn on. Constraints make you creative. Creativity breeds success.”

This made me jump up. It reminded me of my idea of rockets and footballs. Unlike most people, I see freedom as being a rocket. I install it and choose its direction. The sky is grand and there are many options. But I make a choice and set it off. The rocket is going somewhere. It has a specific aim. For me it is a symbol of life. I’m going somewhere and am not afraid to make a choice even when it blows up in the end.

However, as I said, most people don’t think of freedom being a rocket. They see the world as a gigantic football field. A football can be kicked and thrown in all directions. It doesn’t have to choose. Like pinball it is being bounced back and forth by the conditions its environment sets.

This is where I saw the link with Rebecca’s words, because a rocket is limited. It has a set-out course. Real life is less straight forward of course, but living a directed and principle centered life creates constraints. And as Rebecca says, constraints breed creativity and success.

I don’t think we should be afraid to choose and live a constrained life, because I believe it will yield more freedom in the end. Exclusion is also inclusion. Think about it.

Don’t worry, if you have just now planned out your vacation cruises to get a relief from this constrained life; you still have lots of options for you; i.e. log on to a travel website and get your hands on the last minute cruise deals. And last minute deals from princess cruises cover a wide range of the most desired destinations.

I fell in love with a girl, but she remained standing. The contact we had was platonic but intense. Hours and hours on messenger and spent on phone bills. I cannot admit having been blinded but it gave me insight into me being in a manly body. I cannot live on the surface so as usual I fully drowned myself in my thoughts and feelings. She was there to help me face these emotions even more, or let’s say reflect and face myself as I rather felt like hiding from these emotions. I cannot but feel thankful for putting me in this position. It is still draining me from a lot of energy, but this is a chance to become more whole. Not to be afraid of my emotions any further, but to be in touch or balanced with them.
Being from the West and the North, I want to be in control. I want to analyze my feelings and capture them inside a frame. But emotions cannot be rationalized fully. As an aspiring vaisnava, this should not be a mystery. One of the first lessons is that we are not in control and that we should surrender to this fact. I mean not to surrender to our senses so they can drag us from left to right and right to left like a whirlwind blowing a house upside down, but to surrender to the fact that we cannot grasp this whirlwind within our fist and smash it. We should try the best we can to focus on our meditation even when feeling insincere. The name is more merciful. Pray to the name. I know this is hard. Very hard even. The solution is oftentimes easy, but the push we need often hard to find.
I’m praying to the name to deepen my life and to fall in love with these profound heart attacks. Every change means leaving something behind and if this means to leave behind sorrow attachments, I have no problem with becoming more of a human soul.