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  • So Now You Know What Else Existed In The World Outside Of You, Before You Knew Only About Yourself: Franz Kafka

    I read this quote in Franz Kafka’s popular and absolutely amazing short story The Judgement.

    “So now you know what else existed in the world outside of you, before you knew only about yourself!”

    Reading this from the story felt like seeing through a kaleidoscope – moments from my own life where I was either saying this to someone or was at the receiving end of this ‘angry’ remark.

    In the spirit of complete honesty, I did deserve having it said to me on several occasions.

    But on all of them? Hell no!

    However, if you ask me if the people I said it to deserved it, I would probably say yes on most of those occasions.

    Where is this bias coming from? And am I alone in feeling that I am right and the world is wrong?

    Turns out that the answer is NO.

    There is a humongous volume of literature around human selfishness. Glaucon, a Greek philosopher, is known to have mentioned in a discussion with Socrates that people’s good behavior actually only exists for self-interest.

    Hell! Forget literature and just take a look around. Betrayals, fraud and meanness hog headlines in newspapers and prime time television.

    Think selfish leaders driving their own countries to war, or bringing them to the brink of bankruptcy. Think spouses fighting in front of their kids every day. Think an alcoholic father caring for his own pleasure more than the well being of the people who depend on him. Think kids insulting their parents to conform to peer ‘requirements’.

    We are selfish, aren’t we?

    Yes we are, but there is a silver lining.

    We are not all selfish to the extent of narcissism. More often than not, we feel guilty when we realize our mistake. Some of us even act on it and apologize.

    This does two things – we feel better and so does the person we wronged. There’s nothing more relieving than admitting – to someone whom you wronged – that you realize your mistake and regret your behavior towards them.

    Sometimes, when we care for a person too much, we might even swallow our pride and apologize for the mistakes we know we didn’t make (I can see those of who you are spouses or partners smiling at this).

    There are quite a few altruistic people out there – willing to risk their own lives for the greater good. And luckily the world has been producing gentle souls like those since time immemorial as well. And the world is all the better for it.

    Not all of us can be Florence Nightingale, Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela. If you aspire to be one, go you! I am proud of you.

    But for the less ambitious ones out there, what is our role? What can we do to contribute?

    It’s pretty simple actually….

    Be Kind

    Next time when your spouse fights with you, before retorting, take your time, think what might be causing him/her to behave that way.

    Did you leave them alone to take care of the kids for a month ?

    Did you ditch three dates in a row?

    Did you not offer help with the chores when they were in desperate need?

    Next time when an ageing parent makes a rude remark, instead of getting into ‘self-defense’ mode, try to understand what might have caused them to do it.

    Are they feeling neglected?

    Are they in pain?

    Kindness, like money, grows manifold when invested right. But unlike money, it can’t be stolen or destroyed. Hoarding the currency of kindness only makes our life as well all those it touches better.

    Next time you feel that the world revolves around you, remind yourself that it has got better things to do!

    If you liked this quote from the short story The Judgement (written by renowned author Franz Kafka), you might want to take a quick look at the summary of that story. You can check it out here:

    Short summary of The Judgement: A Short Story by Franz Kafka

  • When There Is No One Left In The Living World Who Remembers You, You Disappear From This World. We Call It The Final Death

    I got to hear this line recently while watching the Disney-Pixar movie Coco.

    Without ruining the movie for you, this quote is basically about dead people who are alive in their afterlife conditional on people in the living world remembering them.

    You and I both have seen movies emphasizing the importance of familial ties and love.

    But this message from the movie does something else.

    It evokes a sense of fear.

    I replayed the sentence in my head over and over.

    “When there is no one left in the living world who remembers you, you disappear from this world.”

    Let this sink in and I promise you that it would stress you if not outright scare you.

    The good news is that you are not alone in feeling that way. Human beings, in general, are obsessed with leaving a legacy behind. Something for people they left behind to remember them by.

    Because people forgetting them when they are already gone would be… devastating?

    Where might this sense of fear be coming from?

    Could it be that we humans can’t stand the possibility that our lives mean nothing to
    others around us? That we lived our lives in a way that no one is going to remember us – does this imply that we were a failure?

    Could it be ego? Narcissism?

    We creatively manufacture ways to convince ourselves that our actions will affect the future of the world in some remarkable way.

    There is nothing wrong with wanting to have a legacy. But more often than not, the blind focus on the goal of doing something to be remembered by, takes our focus off the equally-important aspect of enjoying the journey to get there.

    If we constantly are under stress working much longer than normal hours, doing things that we don’t enjoy doing and never getting time to spend with the kid that we think we are doing it all for – what do we think the kid is going to remember us for?

    The journey is as important as the goal, if not more.

    Enjoying the journey will always entail enjoying the present. Enjoying the present would include either or all of these things – spending time with our loved ones, doing something for the less fortunate, doing things that make us happy, enjoying what we do.

    In the words of Arthur Ashe, success is a journey not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.

    We are creating our legacy now.

    What’s it going to be?

  • Dogs Have Boundless Enthusiasm But No Sense of Shame. I Should Have a Dog as a Life Coach: Richard Melville Halle

    I am yet to find someone my age or older that says they love doing grocery. There is something about doing grocery that has chore written all over it.

    And I would be safe in assuming that chores is not something anyone would particularly look forward to doing.

    So here I am on the grocery day, the day when all the gravity of the world is concentrated on my bed and the strongest electromagnetic force of the world is keeping a book glued to my hands.

    Stepping out of bed is particularly difficult considering the forces I am facing. An image of an empty fridge flashes before my eyes.

    Me says to meself : Come on, can’t be that lazy!

    So I step out for my grocery shopping. These days, I do not see many people on the road, but like a charm or a curse, I always see at least one person that will choose that precise time to go for a run.

    Incidentally this person will always have a great body and after apparently running for such a long time , didn’t break a sweat. If I was not feeling guilty until that point, I did now.

    Head down, I keep walking until I see a couple in a distance walking their dog. I wasn’t able to see it clearly but what was unmistakable in that dog was its enthusiasm, and the pride of having two humans dote on him.

    The dog seemed blissfully happy, full of energy like he was seeing the world for the first time.Happiness, as they say, is contagious. I suddenly felt the urge to walk faster to see the dog closely.

    The strangest thing happened. As soon as I was within 5 meter distance from the dog, our eyes met and facing my direction and looking at me, the happy dog sat down.

    Oh! My heart just melted.

    The humans with him were trying to pull on his leash but he didn’t budge. Now, I have never had dogs, so I didn’t know what was to be done next. So I gave him one flying kiss in my head and walked on.

    That one chance encounter with that lovely creature taught me a lot of things. I now believe all the great things they say about having dogs.

    I have since watched Airbud, Hachiko and A Dog’s purpose, absolutely loved them and discovered that I cry more in dog movies than human ones.

    So when Moby says:

    “Dogs have boundless enthusiasm but no sense of shame. I should have a dog as a life coach”

    .. I have no doubts that it is a 100% true and if I was as eloquent as him, I would say the same.

    adult white and brown shih tzu dog
    Photo by Goochie Poochie Grooming on Pexels.com

    If I really like something about a stranger walking on the road, I would think a thousand times before I complimented them, if I did. And here is the little creature, not knowing who I was, treating me as well as a long lost friend. Imagine, the humans he was with, and I didn’t exchange any words.

    The dog and I did conversed more than that.

    Dogs have a way of knowing us in a way that no human can. It’s not for nothing that they are called a man’s best friend.

    I wish for a lot of good things for you, and after shamelessly tweaking the epic line from Star Wars, I will say:

    May a dog be with you!

  • 8 Movie Things That Piss Me Off (Real Bad)

    It has been more than a hundred years since cinema has been around, but there are some things that movies just wouldn’t quit showing.

    I don’t have a problem with that; sure, show the good guy winning in the end, winning over a girl, win a battle, crush the villain’s skull – good stuff all around.

    But there are some things which I have seen so many times in so many movies that whenever I see them again in any movie, it freaks me out.

    1 – When the timer of a bomb stops at 99% or 0.01 seconds before the blast.

    Tom Cruise is fighting for the briefcase, oh man, the clock is ticking, will he able to stop the blast. Oh dear lord, only 5 seconds remaining… 4, 3, 2…

    *hits the big red button in the center of the briefcase*

    Bomb disabled just 1 second before detonation. Phew! That was a close one.

    We never thought that he would kill the bomb just 1 second before detonation!

    For once, I would like to see a movie disabling a virus at 62% or something or a bomb when the clock is at 2 hours 53 minutes or something like that.

    2 – When someone tells a kid “stay here, don’t go anywhere.”

    You know damn well that that kid is NOT gonna stay there.

    This is especially true for horror movies. I get that it may be a plot thing, but boy, wouldn’t I love to see a kid who, when told to stay at one place, would just stay there.

    Just like John Wick’s dog.

    3 – When the hero NEVER reloads his gun.

    A ‘movie gun’ is clearly superior to normal guns, because a ‘movie gun’ keeps firing for what seems like an eternity, but never requires a reload.

    FYI, most regular automatic pistols contain 18 rounds, tops. Once you’ve fired those… YOU RELOAD!

    In movies, during a firefight, they almost never show heroes reloading their guns. Even villains, for that matter.

    The only guys who DO reload their guns usually are the ‘extras’ of the villain who run out of ammo right when they’re face to face with the hero and have a clean chance of killing him.

    They squeeze the trigger, click! uh-oh, they need to reload!

    Yeah, because it’s only their guns that need reloading. Why don’t you use ‘movie guns’, dickheads!

    4 – When someone orders a beverage and then they don’t drink it.

    For all that’s pure in the world, why would they not take a sip, atleast? It irks me to see a fella walk in a cafe, order a coffee, spot a girl, start chatting and leave the goddamn drink to its devices.

    5 – When the villain finally corners the hero and has a gun pointed at him, but decides that it’s a better idea to start a pointless conversation.

    “I see that I have a gun and you don’t. At this point, why don’t I tell you the story of my goat. Once upon a time, I had a goat named Shelly…..”

    I like good guys, you know. I want them to win.

    But it drives me crazy when I see the bad guy start chit-chatting when he has a weapon (and his enemy doesn’t) and has a clear advantage.

    I think it’s just lazy writing. It shouldn’t come to this that they have to get the villain to engage in small talk with the protagonist, especially when he has such an obvious advantage over the protagonist.

    6 – When drivers keep shifting gears and keep going faster and faster.

    You know, there is a limit to the number of gears. A regular car has 5 gears, which means, if you’re driving in the 5th gear, it’s the top gear, which means you don’t have any more gears left!

    Still, in car-chase sequences, it’s so common to see drivers, who are already going at top speeds supposedly, change gears and hit the gas to go even faster.

    Urgghh!

    7 – When gun silencers completely eliminate a gunshot’s sound.

    James Bond puts a silencer on his gun’s nozzle and voila! Now all his gunshots sound like Queen Elizabeth’s spitting. So silent and graceful!

    This is plain wrong.

    Even the best gun silencers are not even remotely as effective as what they show in movies. A silencer certainly reduces the sound of a gunshot, but it never silences a gunshot.

    8 – When stalking and lying are shown to be okay to win a girl’s love.

    This one is particularly shitty, because it has a real impact in our lives. I am sure you may have seen countless romantic comedies in which the guy ‘wins over’ a girl by being insolently persistent. So much so, that he also tells many lies and even stalks her, all of which is hunky dory because the girl likes it and finally falls for the guy.

    This couldn’t be further from the truth.

    ryan reynolds stalking meme

    Persistence is a good thing, but there are other ways to show it.

    Stalking someone, especially when they’ve made it clear that they’re not interested, is not cool.

  • I Don’t Know Why It Should Be, I Am Sure; But The Sight Of Another Man Asleep In Bed When I Am Up, Maddens Me: Jerome K. Jerome

    I came across this quote during a re-read of the famous comic classic and my personal favorite Three Men in A Boat by Jerome k. Jerome.

    In addition to making me smile, it took me on a trip down the memory lane. I don’t know about you but I cannot bear the thought of having to wake up when everyone around me is still asleep.

    I dread my high school exam days to this date, when this was a fairly common occurrence to me.

    ‘Three Men in a Boat’ is my Agony Aunt – not the one that would listen to my woes
    and suggest alleviation mechanisms, but the one that would make me laugh so hard that I forget about everything else.

    But right after that bout would come a phase of reflection, but more on that later..

    Straight back to school days, living with my siblings. I was (and will be, for the foreseeable future) a late riser.

    I would sleep in until noon on weekends. I used to have just two meals – the one you have after lunch (they call it ‘brunch’, right) and dinner – this way, I would load up on all movies and TV shows I could pack in my weekend waking hours.

    I was the most amiable person you could find on the planet if I could sleep a minimum of 10 hours a day.

    That would, however, not be the case if my siblings slept for 10 hours and 5 minutes. No!

    No one could sleep more than me. No one!

    And over the years, I have realized I am as unique in having this trait as 2 billion others on the planet. There is something very disturbing about someone having more privileges – for me it was sleep back then.

    I value my sleep as much as I did back then, but there are quite a few other items that have been added to the list over the last few years.

    I might be happily getting by with my 1-bed apartment until someone my own age, someone I know, has recently paid off the mortgage on a 3-bed. The same apartment that was a haven for me before, suddenly, feels too cramped.

    It’s not even like we are the only ones that resort to comparison; perhaps all of our parents did that too.

    For instance, imagine a boy who’s jubilant that he got an A in his exams, when his parents were expecting him to get just a B+. Obviously, he ‘exceeded expectations’ of his parents.

    But when he breaks the news to his parents, they hardly seem excited about it. Why?

    Because their neighbor’s kid got an A+.

    The scene changes from enthusiastic congratulations to his parents complaining about he ‘failed’ compared to his classmate. ‘After all’ the parents say, ‘don’t you get the same privileges as that boy who lives next door?’

    The Comparison Monster can creep in all spheres of our life and wreak havoc if we are not watchful. We need to guard our happiness and sanity as fiercely as Joey from Friends guards his food.

    joey doesnt share his food meme

    So, how do we ensure that we are not a permanent resident of Compareville aka Miserytown?

    The answer is pretty simple. Read the following quote once, twice, thrice. Hell, put it up in your living room for good measure:

    “Someone else’s beauty is not the absence of your own.”