It's my birthday! Eccentricity turns 29! Happy birthday to me!
"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody or even how to find love. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in some one's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
I love this quote by Neil Gaiman. In fact, I have added things to it! Well, at this stage of my life, I am wondering that there must have been things I learnt incorrectly during my education or I just did not learn certain things!
While I was growing up, we were told that you should get the right grades from the right places. Secondary school exams were the first step to career! Senior secondary was the second and apparently a first class undergraduate degree was the next. Well, I also got an MBA from a top B school and finished writing my first book sometime back and got it published electronically. Whoever has read it has enjoyed it! I am happy about that.
But then, what of it?!! An inept and confused person decided sometime back that I will not have a job, one fine day and I lost it! Well, yeah, I am looking now for there are things to pay! ha!
You think I am disillusioned? You are right. You know disillusioned means 'to be deprived of illusion' and that's what is good about this word!
So, that's all there to it?! By the way, by all conventional Indian Standards, I should have been married by now with approximately 2 kids! Why? I don't know. That's what most people do, don't seek reasons. Don't ask questions. Well, I did! And I am still looking for a partner who understands me and whom I want to love and care for! That's a relationship to me! I hate formalities and social projections!
So, I am spending my birthday reading, thinking and reflecting! May be I will get a few answers and I will write them somewhere. Oh yes, I need to start writing my second book! What's for sure is that I will write a lot. And a few gutsy people will read my books. You know, boldness is perhaps the rarest and most critical of human qualities, to my mind at least.
I have grown up, many times, in chosen solitude. I have had people around me, sporadically, who admired me for my courage but then I have found few who would walk along a long distance! When it got tough, they ran for cover! ha! May their Gods bless them.
Hey, don't let all of this think lead you to believe that I am distressed! ha ha! I am just a crazy guy who speaks his mind without any convulsions on the forehead.
Well, thanks for reading!
The birthday boy
Amar
Friday, April 09, 2010
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Fear and Passion!
Fear:
If fear were to be a human being, he would be a bandit looting the scared and running for his life from the ones who go after him!
Courage is not the absence of fear but the realization that something else is more important than fear!
Passion:
If you are not driven by passion, you are using contaminated fuel! wow! Let passion be your fuel, you will be unstoppable!
The best people in any field by motivated by passion- Mavericks at work
If fear were to be a human being, he would be a bandit looting the scared and running for his life from the ones who go after him!
Courage is not the absence of fear but the realization that something else is more important than fear!
Passion:
If you are not driven by passion, you are using contaminated fuel! wow! Let passion be your fuel, you will be unstoppable!
The best people in any field by motivated by passion- Mavericks at work
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
you know what you want?! go get it!
Once you have decided what you really want to do, which is absolutely the first step, there, really is only, one way to succeed:
Practice. Practice. Practice. Hone your craft. Practice some more.
public speaking? speak, speak, speak and speak some more
writing? write, write, write and write some more
selling? sell, sell and sell some more
advertising? first get in and then create mind movers
When you are not practicing, someone somewhere is. And when the two of you meet, the one who's more sure, will win!
Practice. Practice. Practice. Hone your craft. Practice some more.
public speaking? speak, speak, speak and speak some more
writing? write, write, write and write some more
selling? sell, sell and sell some more
advertising? first get in and then create mind movers
When you are not practicing, someone somewhere is. And when the two of you meet, the one who's more sure, will win!
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Boldness/Courage!
It slowly is sinking on to me that courage is the most supreme trait of greatness-above talent, above perseverance, above whatever you can think of.
Yesterday, I went to attend a book launch in Delhi- a book written by Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Murtaza Bhutto! She has redefined what it means to be courageous (Songs of Blood and Sword). I don't know if she is scared for her life, I am.
I salute the courage of Fatima Bhutto. And I hope she lives a 100 years. If she does, Pakistan and the world will be a much better place.
Yesterday, I went to attend a book launch in Delhi- a book written by Fatima Bhutto, the niece of Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Murtaza Bhutto! She has redefined what it means to be courageous (Songs of Blood and Sword). I don't know if she is scared for her life, I am.
I salute the courage of Fatima Bhutto. And I hope she lives a 100 years. If she does, Pakistan and the world will be a much better place.
Friday, April 02, 2010
The best of Atlas Shrugged!
Atlas Shrugged is the best book I have read. I am making a note of some of the best sections from the book. Snippets from Atlas shrugged:-
"Francisco, what's the most depraved type of human being?"
"The man without a purpose." "Dagny, there is nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work. It is the only measure of human value."
"We have done it, haven't we?" he said. (Hank Rearden)
In payment for every effort, for every sleepless night, for every silent thrust against despair, this moment was all she wanted. "Yes, we have."
"He vanished without a trace into the great unknowns of mediocrity."
"The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to the savings account of one's life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived. The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one's life."
"A man's sexual choice is the result and sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.-Francisco D'anconia
"There is no way to disarm any man, except through guilt. The man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He is the man who will beat us." - Dr. Ferris
"No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't be treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values" (LOVE, Francisco)
"Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatsoever." (John Galt says 'No' when Francisco proposes that she spend her last week with him)
"We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies"
A LIE
People think that a liar gains victory over his victim. What I have learnt is that a lie is an act of self-abdication because one surrenders one's reality to whom one lies making that person one's master condemning oneself from then to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked."- Hank Rearden
DAGNY AND CHERYL
"Dagny, how did you do it? How did you manage to remain unmangled?"
"By holding to just one rule"
"Which"
"To place nothing-nothing-above the verdict of my own mind"
GOD
"The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concept of existence."
"The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice.' Use the last of your strength to understand its meaning. You are still alive. You still have a chance."
"Men can't exist your way! You permit no moments of weakness, you don't allow for human frailties or human feelings!" Dr Stadler to John Galt
"To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and the ruling values of his life: Reason-Purpose-Self Esteem
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. The achievement of your own happiness is the highest moral purpose."
"Dagny, it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence. Don't feel sorry for me."
THE OATH
I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE.
"Francisco, what's the most depraved type of human being?"
"The man without a purpose." "Dagny, there is nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work. It is the only measure of human value."
"We have done it, haven't we?" he said. (Hank Rearden)
In payment for every effort, for every sleepless night, for every silent thrust against despair, this moment was all she wanted. "Yes, we have."
"He vanished without a trace into the great unknowns of mediocrity."
"The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to the savings account of one's life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived. The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one's life."
"A man's sexual choice is the result and sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.-Francisco D'anconia
"There is no way to disarm any man, except through guilt. The man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He is the man who will beat us." - Dr. Ferris
"No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't be treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values" (LOVE, Francisco)
"Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatsoever." (John Galt says 'No' when Francisco proposes that she spend her last week with him)
"We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies"
A LIE
People think that a liar gains victory over his victim. What I have learnt is that a lie is an act of self-abdication because one surrenders one's reality to whom one lies making that person one's master condemning oneself from then to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked."- Hank Rearden
DAGNY AND CHERYL
"Dagny, how did you do it? How did you manage to remain unmangled?"
"By holding to just one rule"
"Which"
"To place nothing-nothing-above the verdict of my own mind"
GOD
"The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive- a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concept of existence."
"The word that has destroyed you is 'sacrifice.' Use the last of your strength to understand its meaning. You are still alive. You still have a chance."
"Men can't exist your way! You permit no moments of weakness, you don't allow for human frailties or human feelings!" Dr Stadler to John Galt
"To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and the ruling values of his life: Reason-Purpose-Self Esteem
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. The achievement of your own happiness is the highest moral purpose."
"Dagny, it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence. Don't feel sorry for me."
THE OATH
I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN TO LIVE FOR MINE.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Pride!
Don't trust the man who avoid questions. The man who has a clean conscience will face every question thrown at him. In fact, he would be eager to answer!
Work for the man in the mirror. He is the only one you need to please. Work for his pride. Work so, that you are able to look in the eyes of the man in the mirror and say, "I am proud of the man that you have become"
Work for the man in the mirror. He is the only one you need to please. Work for his pride. Work so, that you are able to look in the eyes of the man in the mirror and say, "I am proud of the man that you have become"
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
doing what you love and loving what you do!
I finally cracked the puzzle. It has tormented me for a long time.
It's possible to love what you do- only in one instance, which is, when you are doing what you love. . So, I can say that "I love what I do for I do what I love." That's it.
It's possible to love what you do- only in one instance, which is, when you are doing what you love. . So, I can say that "I love what I do for I do what I love." That's it.
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