A regular day, atleast for me, begins with the teeth-brushing ritual. Key components for t-b ritual are the brush,paste and of course the mirror. The mirror..hmm.. the weapon of vanity. For all that the guys curse the womenfolk to be vain.. they match upto them inch by inch.. only doing it in silence..like how they read womens' magazines to understand..or alteast attempt to decipher the female thinking mechanism..
Now, as i was saying... the first thing that you do when u are about to shave/bathe.. is look into the mirror... This is by far the most real(-est) part of your day. NO pretences, no mask, no covering up its you baring all.. to..well.. you. That is what makes it real. You look into the mirror and wonder how little you have changed from yesterday and how much you have changed from the previous years. The spectrum is enormous. The quiet moments that you spend attempting to gauge how much stubble have you grown and why your hair is how it is.. is just a sham.. its just your minds way of camouflaging what you are really thinking. Its funny, a lot of people dream in front of the mirror but shy away from admitting it. i was asked this by a very pretty girl..once..in the dead of the night.. which was kept alive only by her intellectual stimulus....well.. she asked me.. "when was the last time you spent 5 minutes dreaming" to which i replied.. i never did. now i realised i lied.. i apologise. i dream or atleast try to.. in front of the reflective rectangle of silica.
Its quite natural. the mirror is a very logical tool to read the present in reference with the past while constructing your future detail-by-detail. That explains why the a broken mirror brings one 7 years of bad luck.
Its also one of the few opportunities that you look yourself in the eye and ask questions, remenisce,reason and retort to your own demons. Simple things like this makes ones life real, One get in touch with the inate yet sometimes dormant human fabric within them.
So that makes a very good reason why buddhist monks in their final legs of acheiving nirvana shun the mirror, because they dont want to be reminded of their human-ness.
So the next time you look into the mirror.. ask yourself and not the mirror..some real questions.
Ezekiel 25:17. "The path
of the righteous man is beset on
all sides by the inequities of the
selfish and the tyranny of evil
men. Blessed is he who, in the
name of charity and good will,
shepherds the weak through the
valley of darkness, for he is truly
his brother's keeper and the finder
of lost children. And I will
strike down upon thee with great
vengeance and furious anger those
who attempt to poison and destroy
my brothers. And you will know my
name is the Lord when I lay my
vengeance upon you."
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Reverberating Silence
Ever seen those simpson cartoons.. Where there is a evil homer telling HOMER J SIMPSON to do the thing that is best for him.. And there is the angelic homer who advises him to do the right thing.
Has it ever torn you apart... making decisions that you probably have no control over.. the only control that you have is the pretence that you create to satisfy your control-freak nature.. then crib about how you cant help anything. But u can.. im sure you could.. cant you ? Not so sure now. am I ?
The two sides of the same coin.. the two facets to the same story.. the two surfaces of a plane... action-reaction.. the cause and the effect.. it kills you.. all of this.. thinking too fast.. or thinking two slow.. moving ahead.. or dwelling on.. both have its share of side-effects.. the mind is a one of a kind bitch.. it plays these dirty tricks on you sometimes..
Leaves you with no hope sometimes.. then a mirage flashes in front of you.. you know that its a mirage.. that its not for real.. or probably not the right word.. that it is not for ever. momentary... just like the span of the flashing mirage.. but the hopelessly thirsty then longs for the mirage again.. fully aware that its going to get him no-where..atleast not in a position of that persons choice.
There might be times where you have to roll with the times.. just swim with the current.. its especially tough for some who probably don’t identify with the norms of the times..nor respects the currents.. but circumstance make you fall to your knees.. and if you resist.. then its only a matter of time that the baton comes swinging at the back of
They all crack.. its only the duration that differs.. time reduces the egos of the tallest peaks to commonplace rubble.. its only a matter of time..
They say truth is stranger than fiction... true because two dimensional fictional character is painted with black or white.. with the occasional dollops of grey.. but real life has characters colored with the myriad of colors..some of the shades inexplicable.. but you love them.. you don’t know why... they are like those weird wall hangings.. that you love .. they don’t go with your room.. they don’t gel with the color. hell you don’t even have a place to hang them up.. but u love them.. if some1 asks you.. why... ? you look them in the eye and pretend that they are speaking mandarin...
Haiku :
Why are you laughing?
This little game called life is
Deadly serious.
“It’s always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black. "
- Paul Newman
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Nihilism anyone ??
After explaining the paradox of the cage-like freedom, a result of being liberated through the death of God and the nature of all life as a will to power, Friedrich Nietzsche predicts the next step in human evolution, the ubermensch (or overman). Nietzsche's outline for the overman as a possible to solution to the paradox of freedom is prevalent in the film Fight Club.
The overman, says Nietzsche, must be willed: we must not be content with our current state of mediocrity, but strive for perfection. Nietzsche points out, though, that if perfection is accomplished, then the process has ended, and growth ceases. The overman seeks to overcome everything she/he has internalized from external sources, especially society and religion. "The striving for distinction," as Nietzsche calls it, is the process of creating something that is truly one's own (a self); through the will to power, the overman reaches self-realization, but does not stop there. Because of the "will of spirit," the overman continually creates a new self by surpassing (overcoming) the old self: by continually taking risks and always accepting responsibility for her/his actions and vaules, the overman lives by her/his self-created values, realizing she/he is these actions, thus acquiring freedom through growth.
Fight Club's protagonist, "Jack" proclaims that he was "close to being complete," to which his alter-ego, Tyler, responds "Never be complete, stop being perfect; I say let's evolve." Tyler echoes Nietzsche's advocation that man should will the overman, and gives Jack the insight that "The things you own end up owning you." When the film begins, Jack has not yet realized that his life has become defined by external sources and not his own will, but he is introduced to Tyler's philosophy that "Self destruction could be the answer".
Later in the film, Jack tells a police investigator "That wasn't just stuff that got destroyed, that was me": he believes that his possessions create his identity (self), but he beings listening to Tyler, who spouts such insight as "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." Here Tyler refers to the overman's process of overcoming those aspects of one's self not truly one's creation, but an internalization of external sources.
The theme of the overman as self-creating is exemplified in the film: Tyler tells Jack "You are not your job...the contents of your wallet...your sic. khakis," and once Jack realizes that he is Tyler, he sees that he has created his self. Only when Jack takes responsibility for his creation of Tyler does he experience growth (as per Nietzschean guidelines) and understand his freedom from putting society in the place of God as he had formerly done. Nietzsche would explain Jack's creation of a new person by the end of the film as the will of his spirit and his having overcome everything within him, including his self-created self Tyler. Thus Jack, as the overman in Fight Club, takes responsibility for his actions and values, and endures the process of self-overcoming: he calls the end of the film "the beginning," stating, "My eyes are open. Everything's gonna be fine."
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