Minutes in my Mind # 01

Time moves slowly when you're not having fun. I'm writing this at my desk and the time is 2.14pm. It's been 2 days since I came to work at 9.30am this morning - at least it seems like it. And I still have 4 hours to go before I can leave for my classes. These days I feel like I'm just killing time at work waiting to get to class. Is this ennui a normal part of office work or is it just me? This experience makes me even more convinced that a desk job is not for me. I'm not sure what I want to do, but I'm sure what I don't want to do.

Back to the subject of time moving at different speeds. It does. At least Einstein thought so. According to him, if we travel at a speed close to the speed of light, time will move more slowly for us in the perspective of someone who is stationary in relation to us. Time dilation. So cool. Though not in anyway related to why time is moving slowly for me.

More random thoughts:

Space is curved? Is time circular?
Note to self: Find out more about relation between E=mc²  and space-time continuum. By the way, what does continuum mean exactly? And what other contexts can it be used in?

It's ironic that I find physics so interesting after giving up an engineering degree because I hate physics. I guess abstract physics is different from basic physics. It's certainly a whole lot more interesting.

I have this application on my droid called Daily Read. They give you a word, a quote, a joke and a horoscope to.. enrich you? enlighten you? entertain you? dunno. Since I'm bored:

Word of the Day: Horripilate (haw -RIP-uh-leyt)
Meaning :verb: To produce a bristling of the hair on the skin from cold, fear etc ; gooseflesh
Usage: The realization that my boss was looking over my shoulder while I was writing this made the back of my neck horripilate.

Quote: Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite ~John Kenneth Galbraith
Lol. Talk about stating the obvious.

Joke: Not funny, and I didn't geddit, so forget it.

Horoscope: One word:  Bullshit. Make that two words. Generic bullshit. Make that three words. Lame generic bullshit. Hey this is fun. I could go on for a lot longer.

Oh My God. It's 4.26 pm already. I've got an hour and a half till I get out of here. I think I should just do this everyday. A walk through my thoughts while I'm working. Hey Trish, if you're reading this you'd better be prepared for a nonsensical post like this everyday.. :)

Music

"Music soothes the savage beast"

Everyone knows this quote. But apparently this is considered to be a misquote of 

"Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." William Congreve"

But some sources believe that this was not a misquote, but a translation of the Latin: 

"Musica delenit bestiam feram."

Either way, the main point is not to explore the murky origins of the quotes, but the exploration of the subject matter itself. Music is the greatest thing in the world in my opinion. How do you define music? No one knows. People when asked just say music is music. It's too much of a simplification to say that music is a string of notes or a variation in frequency ,as those could just as easily be noise. What makes music and not noise? Music is so hard to define because it is a subjectively perceived phenomenon. Music is different for every individual. Some might consider the waves along the shore to be music. Yet there are others who remain unmoved by that very same sound. 

I was reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's final book - The Valley of Fear from the Sherlock Holmes series the other day, and there was a part which struck me.  It was a portion insignificant to the story itself, and more of a general description. One of the protagonists was describing a band of feared murderers whom he was forced to associate with for certain reasons ( read the book - it's good ) and he remarked on their love of music - 

"Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck down the father of the family, some man against whom they had no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears."

Be it the savage beast or the savage breast, there will be some form of music that moves them. Not only humans, any living thing is susceptible to the power of music. There are stories where characters are able to tame or lure animals by playing various instruments. What is the reason music has such power - to make people cry, to make them smile, to make them melancholic, to lift them out of the melancholia, to make them angry, to make them excited, to make them patriotic, to make them nostalgic, to make them pious? Almost any human can be influenced by the different types of music. And what a variety there are - a religious chant is music, and a heavy metal song is music too. 

I was watching this documentary on The History Channel, about Stonehenge, where they were discussing the rituals that Stonehenge might have been used for thousands of years ago. There was discussion about human sacrifice, but that's another topic altogether. What is relevant though, is the fact that they used drums to induce a trance while the rituals were conducted there. When archeologists attempted to recreate the drum beats to investigate the effect on brain activity at a structure in Maryland that looked similar to how Stonehenge would have looked thousands of years ago, they discovered that there were some frequencies of beats which were able to reverberate and echo all the way to the outer area of the structure. They recorded these sounds, and played them to a test subject while measuring his brain activity - and found that his brain fell into a relaxed state when he heard the rhythmic beats. It was believed that music was used to put the people into a trance and make them believe that a presence was present in their ritualistic circle (probably their version of a shaman wanted to make them believe that he had called a divine power down - there's amply evidence for usage of hallucinogenic drugs being used for this purpose too). So there's probably some scientific explanation about the sound waves affecting the electrical impulses in the brain or something. 

But I don't think my relationship with music can be justified or explained fully by just cold objective scientific jargon. I've listened to piano music before and cried without knowing why. Certain songs that will immediately bring back a certain memory to mind when I hear them. Certain songs which soothe me when I'm angry,depressed or sad. And yet others that I listen to when I'm exercising. Sometimes  I think that my memories are attached to some songs. And when I listen to them I see all the memories in flashback in my mind. And certain songs have lyrics resonate with events in my own life, or my thoughts, or my situation and that affects me when I listen to them. And there are yet other songs, like instrumental pieces, that put me a state of melancholia and make me ponder my past and future just because. There's no concrete reason that I can pinpoint on why I like some pieces of music and why I don't like others. Maybe music is one of those things that you appreciate without analyzing. Just be thankful that you have it your life.

Reflections 1

“What’s the world’s greatest lie?… It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.”
— Paulo Coelho

I think people who didn’t grow up in a civilized society(as we know it) were lucky. At least any thoughts they had were original, and a reflection of their own personalities, and not a product of their upbringing. Well, to some extent their surroundings would have been an influence, like they would’ve liked raw meat because that was all they could get and stuff like that, but at least it would have been better than what we are like now. Now,the sphere of society in which we are brought up defines the way we think. And there are unspoken rules for the whole of “society” that everyone has to follow or be labelled a radical or rebel, or worse, a criminal.

I find myself reflecting on my own life more often than not these days, and being at the crossroads I find myself in,I find myself in danger of falling into that trap of resigning myself. To that elusive thing called fate that everyone uses to excuse their taking the easiest way out. Yes, it will be easier to be less ambitious. To follow what everyone else is doing. Or at least something that everyone else can accept because it is within the limits of what they consider an reasonable action for my age and stage in society. So I’m 22. What am I supposed to be doing? My degree. So if I decide not to? Every single person I’ve met has reacted exactly the same way to my rejection of an engineering degree. Like I am a loser and a retard who didn’t know a good thing when she had one. So it’s a mistake to follow my dreams and not be a lemming? So should I endure the pitying glances? The violent objections of parents and relatives and people I barely know?

I mean theoretically it’s easy to say that you can take control of your lives at any point in time. I understand that, I really do, but taking control requires a lot of effort and mental strength. Especially when everyone seems to have an opinion on what I should be doing, and things get unpleasant when you don’t sit snugly inside your compartment on their cupboard of life or whatever. Mine would have been titled brainy bookworm aka annoying goody two shoes for most of my life. So most people seem to react with surprise that I might actually not want to be considered a brainy bookworm aka annoying goody two shoes. They seem shocked that I know how to lie. And even more shocked to know that I have a personality that is not all good. That I know how to swear. That I defy my parents.

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

Paulo Coelho has a quote for every situation, doesn’t he? Oh well.. Sometimes, I do wonder, why am I fighting so hard to keep my dream? Oh only because I’ve had it for like what, 17 years? Wouldn’t it have been more surprising if I had just ditched it and gone on to become a engineering android? It would have been easier, and what everyone expected me to do. Not that I have anything against engineering. It’s great if you have a passion for it. But I don’t. Not even a dollop of interest. I can’t even muster up a drop. And you expect me to make a career out of it, and act shocked when I don’t want to?

And of course, in the life plan of an Indian girl, there’s always a road block in the form of marriage that supersedes everything else that’s going on in her life when she reaches her mid twenties. So everything that she wants to do, she has to do by that time. Or else, too bad. It wasn’t in your fate. And horrifyingly, I find myself planning my life around such a timeline too. That is what a civilized upbringing does to you. I’m sure I would have been happily swinging on the trees without any thought to marriage until I died if I had been raised in a forest instead of this urban jungle that calls itself civilized. I wouldn’t even have known what marriage was. And that would have been a good thing. And here we are patting ourselves on the back for evolving and leaving behind our barbaric ancestors and becoming civilized blah blah.. And we left behind our capacity for free thought too. Isn’t that more worrying? We call ourselves sophisticated because we have better toys, but if you compare current society with ancient civilizations they were more free in expressing themselves in many ways. Now,the only thing that people express freely is their disapproval..

After all that ranting about society when I know nothing about the anthropological aspects of how it developed and why it’s supposed to be a good thing, I think to myself, I have to find someway to pay for medical school after getting my Bachelors. If not I will have to do a Masters in something, and then I will never be able to do Medicine. And why not? Can’t people get into Medical School when they’re 26? I bet they can. But my brain finds it hard to wrap itself around the concept that I have the choice to continue studying till I’m 80 if I want to. The traditions and conventions that have been drilled into me since birth have tethered me so tightly to this way of life that I find it extremely hard to think of something so revolutionary in relation to my life even in my thoughts.

Maybe I should tattoo Paulo’s quote to my forehead. Or less drastically, write it somewhere where I can see it all the time- to remind myself when I make decisions that I have the right to make my own decisions. Instead of following the little voices in my head that tell me what to do. No, I don’t have schizophrenia, I’m talking about the thoughts of the people around me that have been imprinted in my consciousness, subtly influencing every decision I make.

Wow.Writing is actually cathartic. Who’d have guessed. Maybe I need to get a journal to become less of a emotional mess. Okay, the little voices in my head are telling me to stop my brain vomit and go to sleep to preserve whatever cells I have left. And so I shall.

Suicide

      Have you ever been driven to so much despair that you just want to kill yourself? Just end it all and get away? I mean it's not like I can see much point to life anyway.. You just go through the motions of life and in a few years you drop dead. It's a bell curve. From birth to mid-life it's the positive growth portion of the gradient, and once you hit your 30s you're at the plateau already. Then it's downhill all the way. Until it ends in another ominous flatline at the bottom. End of Story. And what is the point of it all at the end of the whole thing? Nothing. All that buildup and then nothing. Maybe you'd be mourned by a few people. Or a lot of people if you did some stuff to make you famous/infamous in the course of those few years  you were here on Earth. But those people who are mourning you are going to be meeting the same end as you in a few years too. So there's no point in it at all is there? Of course, people try to make it seem like life is not so pointless by pretending like this life is but one stage in the Great Journey. Or whatever. Theories abound- Life after death and yada yada. But no one really knows do they? For all you know you could just become dirt after you die. Which is what scientists are saying anyway.
        So what's the point? I don't know. No one knows. You know, I've considered killing myself so many times. I'm not suicidal you know. At least not in those dramatic cutting wrists, jumping off buildings kind of ways. I've just thought about it in a logical way. Like one possible solution to my problems. Of course, I've never thought of myself as a stupid person. I'm not a masochist either. So, as the logical person that I am, what's my next step? Research. Yup. What's the point of Internet if you can't even find ways to kill yourself on it? Well, so I've searched for painless ways to die. And to my horror, all the commonly used cliches of dying all seem to bring excruciating pain. And the instant deaths all require weird chemicals that are inaccessible. Fantastic.So all those idiots who take pills or slit their wrists to escape their pain actually bring even more pain on themselves? Believing everything you watch in movies is a really bad thing.Reaallly Bad. As in you'd be alive and choking on your vomit as you slowly asphyxiate to death instead of the passing away quietly while sleeping peacefully bad.
       Even then I've wondered, could I endure temporary but horrifying pain to bring about a more permanent release? Who knows? But what if I find out I can't endure it when it's too late, and I've cut my wrists already and am bleeding my veins out? By the way it's really hard to die from slitting your wrists, slitting your neck seems to be more effective since the blood there is at higher pressure. See what good use I've made of my Bio lessons? Anyway, that's one problem. But there's another one. What if all those people talking about life after death turned out to be right? There are any number of numerous situations I would be facing in that case.
      I could be frying in hell for killing myself. Or stuck as a ghost. Unable to do anything except float around. What if I was reborn as a cockroach or something? Then I'd be cursing myself for having killed myself. Jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire. Have you smelled Baygon? It's a fate far worse than death to be smelling that thing for more than a few seconds.
      Well after considering all those things, I still don't know. Is suicide a good option? Call me a coward. Call me an eternal optimist. I keep waiting for things to get better. Reminding myself that life is long and this is just a moment. Just a phase. A sucky, horrible phase. But phases pass. And what if I win a million dollars in the lottery tomorrow and I die today. I'd want to kill myself again if I came back as a ghost and saw that happening. The thing is, no one knows. What kind of day tomorrow brings .Whether it's going to be wonderful or miserable. So everyone just lives in hope. Hope that tomorrow will  be one of the good days.
       I've always been a fan of happy endings. Of course, so is everyone else, whether they want to admit it or not. And I realise that movies always have happy endings most of the time because it doesn't happen as often as we want it to in real life. And what would be the point of making all the movies about the harsh realities of life? It's like experiencing the things you want to forget all over again. It wouldn't be escapism then. But all this aside, happily ever afters in real life aren't impossible. Just less common than in reel life. What if I'm one of the lucky ones who get that, and I gave it up because I gave up half way?
        Maybe I'm just scared of pain.But why can't I be both afraid of pain and an optimist? Let's just take it as me analyzing the problem in a logical way like the logical person that I am. One of the factors is pain. Another factor is the uncertainty. I could end up permanently damaged instead of dead. That would be worse.
Another factor is the possibility of a better solution appearing to me later. So after weighing the pros and cons. I'm just making a logical decision. Suicide is not the option. So let's think about other possible solutions next shall we?
         For all those who were unfortunate enough to read this post- don't blame me for turning it into some sort of feel-goody sermon. It started out as some emo shit, and became some inspirational crap. It's all the same anyway. What can I say, I'm an eternal optimist.

Introducing Tinselfannel

Tinselfannel was a girl, a fact which made her no different from half the world's population. She lived a relatively mundane existence, like the billions of mundane existences in the world, and was perfectly happy being a faceless, nameless member of the "public". Of course, it wasn't like she was abnormal or anything - she had lots of friends, she had decent grades most of the time, she wasn't starving - she was luckier than most of the people in the world. She wasn't an unhappy person because she had the ability to forget, and move on, and she didn't like to dwell on past events most of the time. She was liked by her friends because she was a good listener, always there to lend a shoulder to cry on, or a helping hand. Everyone thought that she would follow the course that had been set out for her - she would do the same thing that everyone around her was doing - study, get good grades, get into college, get a degree, get a job, get married.. the list would go on and on - a to-do list for every stage of her life. And Tinselfannel did nothing to dispel this notion. She herself never gave it much thought. Of course, she had dreams- wild,fanciful dreams- but she was content to live them out in her mind every night and then forget about them.

     You see, Tinselfannel liked to read. And she had a vivid imagination. So there were many, many new things she wanted to try, and she was fascinated by the very different lives that other people around the globe had. Whenever she mentioned wishing to try something new to her parents, they were horrified, because her parents were regular,average people- who were content to live within the small sphere of society that they had encased themselves in- and they had no ambitions for their daughter beyond following in their footsteps. They didn't want different. They wanted her to be the same as everyone else they knew. So their every argument started with, " But no one else is doing that..", or " Everyone else is doing this, why can't you?". They didn't understand that Tinselfannel didn't want to be the same, she thought same was boring, and shallow, and superficial. She liked her friends, but she didn't want to be like them. She wanted to know the whys of every action and reaction of the people around her. She wasn't content, but she didn't have the guts to do something to change that.So she just flowed down the path of life, drifting along like a tree branch pushed along by the current.

But that was all about to change. Even Tinselfannel, who liked to be honest with herself about her reasons for her actions and her feelings, didn't realize this about herself. Deep inside, inside her mind, there was someone else. A darkness. A cold, emotionless, manipulative presence.

If I could fall into the sky

If I could fall into the sky do you think time would pass me by? I could just float in limbo. Never aging. Never thinking. Just drifting in endless inky black space. No sounds. Nothing to penetrate the never-ending sameness of the darkness except the distant glow of stars. Maybe then I'd happier? After all, having no expectations will mean no disappointments won't it? Am I crazy? Or enlightened?