Tuesday, I was chatting with priya and suddenly I typed something involuntarily (monkey at work)... which, I found made sense, later when i scrolled back to see it.
mars: i think thats wat is growing up all about... giving up on the world :))
For example, all of us in India were, at some point or the other, taught about Gandhi and his principles in our schools. And depending on how well the teacher teaches them, they inspire everyone of us to various levels. But when we entered college and started dealing with real world problems, we realised how difficult they are in practice. And we give up (or rather, give in, to the world). Of course, me and priya were dicussing something entirely different but I guess this applies to everything in personal and professional life. To most of what we held dearly as a child, we become indifferent ( to put it euphemistically, "stoic") as we grow. We start our lives with zeal and enthusiasm and think we can handle anything and that success is simple. Over time, we learn that it's ok to loose and we let go.
So can we define maturity as, "Learning to give up and still not feel bad about it"... ?
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Caught up on all of your writing. Your writing is only getting better each time (It was good to begin with). I'll put all of my comments in one place here.
I enjoyed reading the narrative on your exposure to the Sri Lankan and Khalistan issues that have found homes in Canada. And, also your juxtaposition of them with your own historical knowledge. I think the Khalistani sentiment here seems like a vestige disconnected from the homeland, now that India (and Punjab) are forging ahead in this day and age. How did you remember that whole long conversation with Boopalan? Here, I get nasty looks from Aruna for forgetting 2 items in a 5-item grocery list.
I agree that as you grow up you realize that some of those inspired ideals that you held dear when you were young are not that pragmatic in the real world.
That pumping of CO2 sounds alarming. I've begun to distrust actions that try to rectify environmental issues. The earth is far too complicated to trifle with. We should lessen our fossil-fuel dependence. But, there have been far too many ecological disasters because of scientists trying to "fix" problems.
Personally, as I have observed politics and people in the western hemisphere, I have noticed that it is not fair to equate conservatives with racism. True conservatives believe in the individual empowering him/herself to achieve their goals rather than expecting government to do that job for them. That may sound as lacking in compassion to the downtrodden, which may cause an observer to equate it to bigotry. Of course some of the extreme Christian right associating themselves with conservatism doesn't help either. Independent research has shown that conservatives wallop liberals in terms of money and effort expended towards charity. As I've grown older I tend to associate more and more with those types of ideals. Government definitely has a role in thwarting injustices and helping the vulnerable; but taxing the earners and handing out money in welfare and social programs without the expectation of responsibilty and progress has brought great damage to many communities here.
Hey I would prefer to change the definition a bit ...
Maturity is rather learning that victory is not all that easy and idealism is not what we read in our books. We develop it over time.
U can never be called mature if u don't perform your responsibitlies inspite of the hardships. Coming out of it sucessfully (even it is after a good number of failures) and learning how to make right decisions at right time is what I would call as growing up.
The fact is taste of success is better after a failure :)
hmmm... thas an intersting muse...
this reminds me of a particular muse of mine ... which might relate to this...
i was thinking wats that defines gud and bad... and ended up pondering its all connected conscience in a way... this deduction is another muse on its own which i wud explain later...but wat i wanted to relate here is what is that defines conscience...
its when we r a child that we start forming conscience... with a blank mind... whatever we r taught as gud or bad in childhood forms the basis of our conscience... then slowly as we grow old and find ourselves unable to be able to put up with the ideal image that we sketched as being 'good', we find ourselves in conflict... this conflict becums unbearable and slowly the conscience is loosened a bit and thas how we get getting on with life... the satisfaction/guilt on doing sumthin depends not or whether its morally right or wrong... but whether u have loosened ur conscience to that extent or not....
a guy who commits a murder wud be unhappy only as long as he is guilty to his conscience... once he has taught himself its not bad... he is satisfied...
im not talking abt laws here... law makes a thoroughly satisfied killer also unhappy by punishing him...im talking abt the hapiness in sense of the moral conflict thats always on inside us
i think its the difference between Simplicity and complexity ...
When we were young we were taught things in a language which was simple enough for us to understand ... Definitions of good and bad were simple ... With age we started understanding that they r not so simple and that there is nothing as such fixed as good and bad and that we define it ourselves ... Till then it was like the whole world has already been clearly fit into a table with two colums "The Good" and "The bad".(Even then we did a lot of Bad-according-to-us things). Its not that we tried practising idealism as taught to us only to find it too difficult to practise in the real world ... I think we started realising that there isnt any need to practise what we once held dear .... Also when we were young we had a lot of things done for us and now when we find practising idealism causes problems in our jooly-good life we slowly stop doing it ...
As far as conscience is concerned it all comes down to what one's priorities are ....
We say in Tamil "manasatchikku bayandhu" ... i believe manasaatchi itself is fear of something else....so someone who believes in futility may act in a totally incomprehensible way ...
I think its learning to accept everything with a stoic status
@shyam: yes it is (euphemestically) ;)
we are not just looking at real world but a different world. the world of the gandhian era and the present world are different in terms of developments, corruption etc. so, do u think the reason for non-applicability of those principles can be the difference in conditions? and may be there is a better term to define our pragmatic attitude towards life. nyways nice post. i was unable to answer the questions u raised, but was able feel them.
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