The invisible moments

This weekend, I went for a trip near the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam. The place was great. Dam has lead to creation of an artificial lake. And in this artificial lake, there are some islands.

We spent an evening and a whole night on one of these islands.

The island in middle is where we camped

On the island, we used the wood lying here and there to cook some food, and then hiked to the temple which was at the top of the hill where we slept for the night.

Sleeping on the top of a hill on an island, which is in the middle of a reservoir is somewhat scary at the visceral level. You can just look from the top and look at the rocks which have been eroded by the water. You can hear the sound of the water. The sound of water, which surrounds you on all sides. Even if there is enough space for you to sleep, you can be a bit scared that you might fall down from the top of this hill. An irrational fear!

To top all this, it was raining from time to time when we were on the island. It just felt like that I had surrendered to the forces of nature and anything is possible from here. It was both breathtaking and terrifying.

While it was a very photogenic place, the best moments or feel of the place could never be captured by a camera and shared as content. Because the best moments on the island were the rush of adrenaline, combined with few other hormones. They induce the feeling in you at the moment.

At some of these moments you enjoy the beauty of the nature, and at other moments, you are scared of the beast that the nature is. Another moment, you think about how inconsequential you are in the midst of the powerful nature. Sometimes you think of the others who might have witnessed the same beauty, but perished with time, while the nature still stands here, a bit eroded and changed, but nonetheless there.

All these thoughts come to your mind, when you visit such a place. Not the visuals, its what you feel at the moment is what your experience is, of that place. And that experience is much more than what can be captured and shared by a photo.

It is not just the cold winds that hits you when you go to such a place, its the procession of almost meditative thoughts. Thoughts which you otherwise may not have, for which you might need to sit in meditative state for years! But when you are at a natural place, these thoughts, these experiences, hit you in waves. You feel pretty amazing. No wonder so many yogis meditate in the midst of nature.

So when people are totally occupied by their cameras at places like these, I feel bad for them. Because they can only see with their eyes, but can not feel with their being.

At these places, you need to let the camera go for a second. And let the moment hit you with its full force. Its force of wind, force of beauty, of power and of thought inducing ability. Because then you will be enjoying the invisible moments. Maybe, you might become a yogi in a moment!

Bucket lists may not be such a great idea for travel

I like to travel, and so do many people. For that matter, who does not like to travel? Almost everyone does! So whenever I meet people who are traveling, I get into conversation with them. These conversations are often the best memories, but there is question that I don’t enjoy as much in these chats.

Far too many times, people ask me about my bucket list and I usually don’t have one. Sometimes I will visit a city and see what are the important things there and pick 2-3 places to travel around and see in the city, but almost ensure that I keep at least 50% of the itinerary wide open.

50% of the time is wide open to any new experience that the time will offer. I can see something I like and spend bunch of time on it. I can meet someone and then travel with them together. I can like a remote hill that I see from far and I would just hike to it. Or I can meet someone at a restaurant and just talk to them for hours.

This time is usually when I feel that I am soaking in on the place that I am visiting. I make friends, talk with them, feel what they are going through and feel enriched by the stories that they tell me. Sometimes someone is very warm as a person and I can be enough relaxed because I am not going anywhere to feel their warmth!

Dancing our hearts out! With couple of Scandinavian guys in Phuket

While bucket lists are good ways to cover lots of places of interests while traveling, the most important thing to experience for me when I go to a different place is its culture. Its people who are otherwise similar to me in that they are human too, they have a totally different perspective on life mostly just because they were born in a different culture.

To experience the culture of a place, you need to be relaxed and not in a rush.

When you experience a new culture, it gives you new eyes to see things with. It is something which can not be captured in a photo, but you will know and feel.

Meta travel plan

Another reason to have lots of time open in your schedule is because you don’t know what you need to experience. If you already know what you want to experience, your new experiences will be limited by what you already know.

Before you start off for the place you are visiting, you have already limited your experiences to what you have read on a travel website! You are not an explorer, you are just going through a check list. Only because this checklist is named as bucket list does not make it less clinical.

But if you accept that you don’t know what you have to experience, and keep the window for it, maybe you will experience something that you don’t know.

Swimming with super nice guys from Hampi

And isn’t experiencing something new, the whole point of traveling!?

Dinner with couple of South Korean guys in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City

For me, meta travel, wherein I go to places and do things that I don’t plan in advance is the core experience of travel.

While bucket list is good for photos, do you really want to just collect photos, or you want to immerse yourself in a new experience altogether?

This is why being grateful will make you happy

Government and people and who is responsible for what?

Government is composed of elected representatives of society. These representatives are selected by the people themselves, because the people believe these leaders to be capable of taking them to a better future.

The leaders set the direction of the future and put the wheels of change in motion. But to change a country of over a billion people, a leader can only set the vision and necessary policies in place. It would be up to the people of the country to take advantage of these policies in order to bring those changes.

Take for example – healthcare. All human societies need good healthcare because only a healthy individual can realise his/her own potential and in turn contribute to the society. For a good healthcare system, there should be the presence of good hospitals, good doctors, good nursing care, medicine supply and all of these should be there at prices which most members of the society can avail. But too often we see that healthcare is too costly. Doctors and hospitals charge exorbitant fee from the patient and focus only on money and not on the making the individual healthy. Should the government intervene? Well, this is a complex question.

Government can put a cap on the fee that a doctor can collect, but is that really the right thing to do? Why should a doctor who has spent years into learning and specialising into a narrow area, not be allowed to charge more than some other doctor who is mediocre. If there is a cap, then that would lead to mediocrity, as has been evident in the socialist countries of the world.

What is the solution then? In a world in which information is easy to create and spread, the role of government is easy to define and but it is still hard to execute in real life.

The government can setup the agenda that it wants to provide good healthcare for the people and setup the parameters for it. After that it should promote these institutions-

1. Healthcare institutions which fulfil the government goals. Goals like- eradication of a disease, vaccination of kids, sex education for young etc.
2. Rating agencies which can rate the hospitals etc. based on how well they are run and helping the patient. These can be private as well as public agencies, but the role of the public agencies should be small so that these public agencies don’t become too powerful because that can lead to corruption. Private rating agencies need to keep their reputation intact for them to be believable and hence there is lesser scope for corruption in them.
3. A watchdog agency which prevents collaboration between the healthcare institutions and rating agencies. Watchdog should have no power to take any action whose reason can not be disclosed in public.
4. An information system should be developed in which the above three pieces of information can be reviewed by the citizens of the country.

The goal of capitalism is not to make few people rich, it is to make the systems efficient and reward those, who are contributing the maximum to the happiness of individuals and of the society. The government of a country such as India, should embrace capitalism, and fight crony capitalism at the same time.

Meanwhile, we – the individuals, have the opportunity to do the things that we want to do and create wealth for ourselves. We can not wait the government to do things for us. We are human beings, and as such, we are capable of thinking, and of devising our own solutions. We should not wait and watch and waste our time. We should put our brains and our hands to work in order to create happiness and wealth.

Son and father: Divine connection

Just watch this.

 

 

The shared path

The whole world at the moment seems to be majorly divided into right and left. The sad tragedy is that people belonging to either side don’t want to listen to other side because they proclaim to be intellectually superior to the other side.

Its our job to always listen to the other side and understand their whole point of view. The above speech by Ms. Meg Whitman is an excellent one for the time. We should all actively seek and try to course correct our confirmation biases.

We may belong to right or to left, but since our time and hence our destinies are inter-twined, its our responsibility to understand the people with whom we are walking.

Hopefully you find the time to listen to her speech.

Cheers.

Negativity bias and free media

Human brain is hardwired to ponder about the negative things more than positive news. They say that it might have helped in the human survival in the past where one needed to be really prepared for the negative scenarios. Hence whenever there are wars, people are glued to news channels, seeking information.

Today most of the news media is free. That means, that you are not making any money for the media. But the media makes money by advertising. And its driven by page views. The more pages you view, the more money you make for media companies. Because you would consume more content if the content is negative, because of negativity bias, the media organisations have a perverse incentive to have lots and lots of negative news for you.

That is why, today we live in a world which is many many time more peaceful than any earlier point in history, but if you look at the news these days, it looks like the world is a shit show right now!

Its not, the media is tricking you and your mind. So go buy a book, and buy a magazine and read that to get a great picture of the world.

Understand rather than just know

Whenever someone does not make any sense to you, there are two choices – call the other person senseless(because he is not making sense), or may be try to understand that person because you might be wrong yourself.

If you start calling other person names, then you might be right or wrong but you would never know. But more importantly, you would miss out on knowing a person who could have become a good friend of yours. Yes, you don’t understand him but maybe this is your chance to understand more about the world?

If you think you are a complete world in yourself, there is a very high probability that you are a small island.

Once a guy shot Teddy Roosevelt with a gun and what was his reaction? He wanted to know what that guy shoot him. 

Why did I write this blog post? because i see all over, people who think that they are liberals calling others as bigots and showing superiority without truly having any understanding of those whom they call as bigots. This has never been the hallmark of a liberal mind to call others with names. Maybe they should try to understand the other side. Even if the other side might seem wrong, its better to understand the other side. That is the hallmark of an open mind.

Career

Heard this quote, which might be the best quote on work i have ever heard about work and life. Here it goes-

No life worthy of the name consists of anything more than the continual series of struggles to develop one’s character through the medium of whatever one has chosen as a career.

So the quote above describes, the career not only as a way to earn money, but also a contributing factor of who are becoming as a person with progression of time.

Love it except the name part. I would say, leave the name part, have fun while you are doing what you are doing. The name might come if it has to come, does not really matter to someone like me. If the name part is exciting to you, then this quote might be perfect.

Your thoughts?

Godfather

Godfather is a great novel. Now me saying that does add anything to the greatness of the novel.

But there are a lot of quotes from the novel that showcase their truism to me when they come alive in my own life.

Here are some of my favourites.

A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.

I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.

Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.

You cannot say ‘no’ to the people you love, not often. That’s the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a ‘yes’. Or you have to make them say ‘no.’ You have to take time and trouble.

Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .

Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.

For a single book, it has the most quotable quotes for me.

Which is the similar book for you?