Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Blow hot, blow cold

That is the problem with thinking too much. You are happy this moment. You are unhappy the next moment. Do you really know what makes you happy? Perhaps not. Otherwise why get upset for simple things?

There are many people who live without thinking. I must have mused about this topic all through the life. The other day I was teaching change to some really naïve people who would not even understand why they have to change. The company somehow thought their staff requires training on change before they sit through the other part of the functional kind of trainings. It fell on me to talk to these people about the need for change. Change in your attitude. I remember the joke told by a friend of mine who talks real sense. It looks the English people were really skeptics at a particular point of time. During those days looks like an English man said “Oh God! If there is a God, save my soul, if there is a soul!” My situation was something like this in that so called class. I was tackling the eighth batch of this lot. They are really unassuming people. Not the least intelligent. They do not know why they are doing what they are doing. They are doing it because there is nothing better to do. I was trying to tell them about thinking. My struggle was to tell them, the way to new activity. If you keep doing the same old things, you keep getting the same old results. This is exactly what I wanted to tell. You have to think. If the thinking leads to some new ideas, your action will also change. If actions are changed, it is likely that there will be new results.

All this is only the background to what happened to them in the course of that class. I somehow happened to insert a picture of the famous sculpture, “The thinking man” in the power point presentation that I used in the class. The thinking man is naked. He is thinking really intensively. I asked off hand, if the people in the class knew anyone who also thinks and is naked. Pat came the reply “Vemana.” This really shocked me. I was thinking that these people do not know much. My god! It was not like that. This Vemana a philosopher poet is really famous in the firmament of Indian thought process.

Rodin’s thinking man is an example of thinking people. Absorbed totally in what they do! Not even aware that you don’t have a proper dress on you. Thinkers are a lot more different from non thinkers. Then who is a thinker and who is not? That is the biggest question. All people do think. That does not come under the thinking that I am trying to discuss here. Do you think about things that no one thought of thinking about? That is where the difference is. If you think about food, shelter and the usual things, you are not a thinker.

I was coming out of an office. I found all the two wheelers parked in the portico, obstructing the path. I was thinking why people do such things. If they think like I do, they will never park the vehicles in the way they did. Unfortunately we expect people to think like what we do. We even get upset about people not understanding what we are telling. If that kind of acceptance is there, there would not be nay trouble in the society at all. Only since people think in their own individual way, things go in all the directions. People get into discussions and arguments when they find themselves at two different sides of the matter. Regarding the argument, it is beautifully said that there are three points under consideration there. Two belong to the two parties and the third is the truth. It is to say that neither of the parties is true.

When you think about yourself, most of the times you are unhappy. If you are happy with yourself, that is the end of the happiness. Days become true copies of yesterdays and the life will become so dull that you will not even know that you are living. Most of us are thinking that we are happy with the earnings you get, happiness you get, because it is all part of the game. Happy are those people who resign to the fate and see an average movie and eat a Dosas and think that that was a celebration. My problem is why I am not like that? I cannot even enjoy the best of the films. Because I tend to think of everything except what the film wants you to think. In such a situation if you think about yourself, you are bound to feel disgusted. I know that all the emotions are energies. We can turn the energy into another direction and make use of it to improve self. Every time you feel bad, it is a chance to think! Every time you feel good, it is time to think too. In fact all the time it is good to think. Think and go mad, instead of going mad just like that!

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