Judgements, Decisions and Life

Why do people in general portray a character? Why do people act like a different person? What do they fear  the most? Everyone I have met tends to pretend or act like someone else, someone they are not. Even I do it. Is it wrong or is it right? What is wrong or right is relative. During the World Wars, taking peoples lives was justified. Now it is not. It never was, in the view of humanity. But it somehow was justified. Still I don't understand it. Maybe we had to actually be there to understand. So why do we all act? Is it natural to act? Act according to the way the people in our lives want us to. What do people in our lives mean? People in our lives mean the people whom you can care about. No matter what. Can we live a life like this?
I would like to live my life the way I want to. Everyone would. There is a huge risk though. If each one of us lived the way we like, we would never have friends, we would never have partners for life. Why so? Are we all so different that we cannot be the natural way we are? No, actually we are all the same. We are same in so many ways we don't think of. We are humans. We belong to one species. We belong to one earth.
People judge. I judge. We judge people based on the smallest to the biggest things that we define as small or big. We make decisions to know a particular person or not based solely on what we have judged. Can we all be right all the time? Isn't it human to make mistakes? How about we take up that we make mistakes about judging each and every person that we judge? Will that solve the problem? No. We will continue to judge people, however accurate we are or not. According to our brains, we are all accurate else we wouldn't judge people. We all believe we don't have enough time to get to know the person so we judge. Its natural. We can't help it. We sometimes judge by the way the person is at that moment. Who the hell knows why that person is behaving the way one is then? Still we judge. We think we can think of all the possible things that could have caused the person behaving the way one was and we judge. Judging is not good. It hurts the person who is being judged. Whether the judgement about them was good or bad, it doesn't matter. It always hurts. Why? Because we all feel that we are special. That nobody knows us the way we do about ourselves. So it doesn't matter if the judgement was good or bad. It hurts because, every time we are being judged, we feel unworthy of their time, the time it would take people to listen to us, the time it would take people to be friends with us, the time it would take people to love us. We feel that they don't know why we take the decisions we take, why we make the choices that we make, why we feel happy, why we feel sad, why we feel angry, why we feel disappointed, why we feel excited, why we feel passionate, why we feel nothing sometimes, why we feel everything sometimes. We feel nobody has the patience or even curiosity to know why we are the way we are. Everyone will get offended if one is said to by another person that they know them. Everyone keeps secrets. Some secrets are so deep that only the fear of death brings those secrets into the foreground thought process. We never share these secrets. We might have shared these secrets once that fear has gone away but I believe everyone has secrets at a particular point of time that we just cannot share it, which surfaces when faced with the fear we most fear about. Even each one of us are not consciously aware that these secrets exist until that situation is faced. So how will any one of us know who each one really are. These secrets are mostly what define us, sub consciously of course. So how do we know what the other person really is?
Think of this common situation. You are on a date with a girl and obviously you are trying to impress her. Maybe one'll change for the better or worse at that moment, but we are all the same. Its funny how we are aware that the person who is sitting right in front of you, doesn't know you at all but knows everything that is wrong with you. Does she really know what is wrong with us? No, but she judges and makes her decisions based on the judgement. That feeling that everything wrong with us is so obvious to the other person but its a mystery to our own selves is nothing but that judgement that is being passed on us from a different set of eyes, a different vision. We know what we are, everybody does know our own selves. But we don't really know what the other person's eyes see, what their perspective is, what their image of us is. We will never come to know. Because even they act, they pretend to understand us, they pretend to love us while all they needed was company ( could be for sex, could be to kill loneliness ), the fact of the matter is everyone of us acts.
Our lives is like the film industry. The good actors are recognized and loved by few, while the ones who just act the way most people want to is loved and recognized by many. So do you want to be a good actor or an actor that most people would approve of. Its again a choice, depends on individual to individual. We can never say why that the individual made a choice between the two. But we can for sure say this, if we act the way that seems most inline with the way natural to us, we would be good actors ( unlike the film industry's definition of good actors). If we act the way that is most unnatural to us, then we would be greatly accepted actors because most of the time it is to please the environment. Who is happier? The good actor or the great actor? The good actor will eventually realize true happiness, while the great actor might enjoy short lived happiness time to time. Make a choice, make a decision. People will always judge. People are so different. There might be someone that thinks you have made the wrong choice. But its only you that can actually tell.

The Pseudo Reflex

I think many people are starting to believe that the saying "Change is the only thing constant" can be applied to any given situation. They use this reasoning to pacify whatever they are bothered about. This is all we need to survive in a way to accept any change. If change was the only thing constant, why do people feel the need to say "I need a change" or something of the similar thought. Whats more ironical is that the same person would have used both the phrases. The question is "Is this reasoning or answer for everything enough?".
We use this for everything and its getting on my nerves. One loses a job, they quote change is constant. A relationship falls apart, they quote it. Well I covered the two main areas where people use it often. And I'm surprised that people can be so hollow to think that "change is constant" was the reason. I mean, WTF.
I believe people can never change. Yeah yeah they change in appearance, they sometimes give up habits, take up new ones etc etc. But do they actually change? No. We all are born with a framework in our DNA. A framework that has changed form generation to generation. But this framework doesn't really change in a person's lifetime. Yes we can all control the way we react to things. But can we actually control the way we feel about things?
Lets say you are in a relationship/job. When one gets dumped/fired, one is always going to feel a set of emotions. These set of emotions are not going to change. The only thing that changes is the way we react to these emotions. The first time this happens, one is going to react in a way that is bad for the individual. The second time he will react in a different way. If you don't then you are a moron. Because that is what we do. For those set of emotions we find better ways to react, in other words better solutions.
Imagine a girl who has always been told to be beautiful from many guys. No one has ever thought otherwise. The same set of emotions will be felt by her every single time. The first time she gets to know she is beautiful from an another person's point of view, she'll probably react with a blush. Second time, it'll be a smaller blush. Third time, there'll be no blush. But she'll realize that if she doesn't blush, people will think that she is too arrogant. So the fourth time, she'll fake the blush. Now this will become a habit. Sub consciously she'll continue to do this as a reflex action ( I call it the PSEUDO REFLEX ). Its a pseudo reflex action for many people to immediately smile as soon as they meet people. They don't even realize they are doing it. Its a good thing. Its a good presentation of oneself. Don't know how I missed this pseudo reflex. More than 95% of the time, it will be a genuine smile with a genuinely amusing or joyful reason behind it. Anyways the above example was a good example of a pseudo reflex.
Lets say that a girl during her lifetime from childhood to adulthood has often read about suicides. Suicides because of a guy cheating a girl. Or the other way around. Just recall how the newspapers print it. There'll be no opinion from the newspaper that it is a bad thing. They just write a report, print the news. And this girl throughout her life hasn't discussed this with anyone. So her consciousness about the concept of suicides was never challenged to think otherwise. What do you think she will think is the way to react when such a thing happens? Remember that she hasn't even felt those emotions yet to know how she'll react naturally. But she already has a pseudo reflex to this situation.Without even the emotions being actually triggered, the response to such an event was already ready. Thus the way we react to stuff can be manipulated easily. But the way we feel can never be manipulated.
This is the reason why I don't believe in changes. Because the way we feel will never change.

I have a programmer explanation to this. Feelings are like pointers. They will point to only one location. And the reactions are like the contents of that location. They can keep changing. And a pseudo reflex is a dangling pointer. If you are lucky, the program won't crash. Else everything will crash. So concentrate on the pointers and your program of life will run smoothly.

Also women are like the contents of a location a pointer points to. For example, if your pointer is of type integer and you try to point to a float.... boooffff... there will be errors.... lol... ( pun intended ).

Are you special?

I have heard people say that the mind is as vast as the universe and to understand it would be the more difficult than understanding the universe. The exploration of the human mind is the most fascinating journey that any person can experience i.e if the person chooses to. To delve into the working of the mind is the most risk that a person can take in this life that we are presented with. To choose to do this might be the worst mistake of your life but it might turn out to be something beautiful. Putting it in simple words, its like a black hole. No one will ever know what is one the other side unless one actually travels through it and comes out on the other side. But who is willing to take the risk?
Many psychologists and psychiatrists believe they can understand the human mind. They are fooling themselves if they believe that they actually can. More than anyone they should know that it isn't possible. Like the universe, the mind is constantly expanding with knowledge. When I say knowledge, its not just the books we read or the information we get from newspapers. Its everything that your six senses are sensing every moment. So its constantly subject to change. And something that is constantly changing can never be measured. But can we get around this problem?
For years scientists have tried solving the mysteries of the universe. It will never be possible. Even the greatest mind of the present era gave up and said that aliens might comprehend the universe. The universe is a fascinating thing no doubt. Scientists who study the universe are lost in the fascination of discovering something new. I'm afraid they are taking the wrong direction to unraveling the mysteries. All the answers are present in one's own mind. For the universe to stand itself explained, the mind is going to be the key.
Everyone of us have experienced this. We want to do one thing. But we do another. We want to go along a path or a way and we end up going on a completely different path. Why is that? We all realize that this is happening on a day to day basis but why isn't it controllable? Is the world so random and chaotic that it cannot be controlled? The answer I'm afraid is Yes.
I believe that the mind and the soul are two different things. Simply put, the soul is emotion and mind is logic. And everyone should agree on this. Why one should agree? Every human thinks he is special. Hell, even I think that I'm special. That there is some unique reason why we are alive. What makes us different than animals, plants, micro organisms? The soul. The soul, I really am in no position to define it. But I know that this is the reason why we think we are special. Imagine we didn't have this soul. Then the purpose of being alive is to ensure survival of the species ( in other words reproduction ). But think about it, we are 6 billion plus. And if you consider the ratio size of one human to the population, we are thriving. There is no need for each and every woman to give birth to an offspring. We have ensured the survival of the species through the most cruelest things ever. We have changed the face of the earth. The earth was like the face of a beautiful girl and we humans have literally poured acid to it and now some eco-mentalists are performing a plastic surgery to cover the scars. Its never going to be the same. Anyways, the point I was trying to make is we are thriving and there is no reason for each and everyone to reproduce, if, if we didn't have the soul. Unfortunately for the earth, we have the soul. Its what makes us reproduce, the soul making us think we are special and the offspring also is going to be special. Is it a good thing or a bad thing. Well I can't really say. But what I'm going to describe is happening is definitely not a good thing.
This is the major problem that every human faces. That the mind and soul are not in sync. Because the soul considers itself to be special, the human mind attached to this soul needs to be special. But are we actually doing anything substantial to consider ourselves even remotely special? at least most of us. This is the pain that will start to exist once the realization that the mind and the soul are not in sync. This is the reason why we start out to do something and then end up doing it completely in a different way or doing a completely different thing altogether. We are making our mind do things that our soul doesn't really want. Eventually that soul, which in most people hear it as an inner voice fades away. But it doesn't really fade away, does it. It manifests itself in a different way, in a negative way, giving rise to negative emotions.
So if you still didn't get why you are not happy, its because you are not following your heart(soul).
If we go by logic in each and everything we do, our soul will die. Then there is no difference between a robot and a human. Most of us think emotions or being emotional is bad. We feel that way because it has already manifested itself in a negative way. Emotions are good. We need to nurture them. Strengthen them. It'll what make you feel alive at the end of the day. Being alive and feeling alive are two different things.
So to understand the mind, understand and listen to that inner voice. Give it what it wants. The mind and its logic will stand itself explained.

Ideas, Perceptions, Belief Systems and Reality

This is a completely non-original idea that came into my mind. Rather for a change I listened to people ( when I say people, the general idea is that I listened to the people I came across face to face in every day life... it is time to accept that the general idea is not always true... ). Let me tell you that I am a little drunk and all I wanted to do is write, so I'm writing after a long break from my tragedy story post.

Here I am reading books ( notice the usage of plural  "books" ), The Grand Design, Ramayana, Letters to Sam, Operating Systems ( which actually gave me nothing :) for this blog ), The Mindfield, and all I have left is questions. Questions that will continue to be mysterious and intriguing when thought of. Questions for which there is no real answer at any particular point in time. This conclusion being influenced from the fact that any physical body's speed can never be measured absolutely but only relatively. I really don't know how that popped into my head right now, but reality is it did. It only means that our perceptions ( or in laymen terms, idea of reality ) changes, over time, over experiences. Its actually redundant while separating time and experienced from an intellectual and logical point of view because over time, we experience ( whatever that experience is , we experience ). Now, to be honest, I'm kind of lost in my pool of thought processes but yet I shall attempt to write something ( meaningful or not ).

You know what society defines an Idea is, most people although a integral part of society do not understand the meaning of Idea. Idea, arises in a reflex, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection, for example, when we talk about the idea of a person or a place. So that is in fact in a sentence how an idea can be defined. The Idea is the only natural thing that a human brain can think of. True. It doesn't matter if the idea is wrong or right ( when I say right, I mean accepted by society ). Let me take an example of an idea, " The earth is flat " was an idea, naturally occurred to some guy way back in history. It just so happened that many of the people who heard this idea, naturally (meaning to say that when those people were kind of provoked to think about it, as a reflex thought ), accepted the idea. This was not just an idea, it was a perception.

Perception, is a state of awareness attained by interpreting the sensory information. The idea above, turned into a perception when they limited their interpretations to the observance of what was on the ground. Why did they limit, I have absolutely no idea :) . But I do have a perception :) . I think that the people then, were just not capable of thinking more or they did not want to think more ( or observe more ). They were satisfied with this idea that the earth was flat because it answered questions like, "How are we standing on the ground?" "How do things always fall back to the ground when thrown upwards?". It was actually natural to think that the earth was flat. It wasn't just an idea or a perception anymore. It was a belief.

Belief, is actually a proposition, that  individual holds ( assumes ) to be true. After a few generations of the perception that the earth was flat, the people just believed that it was flat. Did you know that the Roman Catholic Church believed that the earth was the center of the universe and everything including the sun revolved around the earth till 1992? Sounds insane now doesn't it? That is called belief. It needed no actual proof. The idea and the perception was enough. We are no longer in the example that " the earth is flat ", mind you. I too just realized it :) . The idea popped into ones head naturally seeing the stars and the sun move in somewhat circular ways around the earth. The perception formed by limited observation, obviously. But belief was just blind, ignorant. The belief becomes a belief system when other ideas are influenced by this belief.


Reality, Shit right? It shatters all your ideas, perceptions and belief systems from time to time. That is what reality is. I shall attempt to define reality in different ways ( all or none of which may satisfy your beautiful mind ). Reality is, to love someone so much that you can say that she is the love of my life and knowing you can't be with her. Reality is, to have so many dreams that actually give a reason to live and yet you live not living any of those dreams. Reality is, to accept whatever you have or get and adapt to anything that nature throws at you. Reality is sarcasm universified. The Roman Catholic although got an idea that they may be wrong, started to perceive the earth to move around the sun, weren't ready to let go off their belief, at least not until reality hit them. The reality that shattered their belief was firstly internal doubts on their original ideas, perceptions and beliefs and only secondly was scientific evidence.


You know what my idea, perception and belief system was? I had an idea when I first met her that I could have a girlfriend like her ( just because I liked her smile and her eyes ). My perception was that I can live with her because she listened to me and came rather close to understanding my deepest dreams and fears. I believed she was the one, that to be with her and to love her everyday is the purpose of life, that she will feel the same. Reality, such a bitch !. It shattered everything. I have to accept reality just as the Roman Catholic Church accepted that the earth was not the center of the universe ( it took nearly 359 years to accept reality, don't really know how long I will take to accept mine ) . Adapt to live ( or rather to survive ). Can I ?, it is possible. Should I? Of course, Yes, what other choice do I have. Will I? I don't know.

a friend once told me...

" Can you stop finding reasons to be sad and find a reason to be happy.? ", Shweta rhetorically questioned me. I couldn't exactly interpret what she was trying to say. This was the first time in years that a girl has gotten to know me enough to point out something wrong in me. I knew something had to be wrong with me. I always guessed that I was too good a person at heart for the modern age. But what she asked me really got me thinking about myself. The scenario that led to this :

I was just jumping through some tracks on the car stereo to find a Hindi song as for about a month now, I only played English songs in my car and most often than not Shweta hadn't even heard about them. I thought "ok ! she has not complained about the music in my car, not directly at least, so before she does that let me play some Hindi music". I hadn't heard to this song " Tera Hone Laga Hoon" from the movie "Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani" sung by "Atif Aslam" for over a year if I remember right. So I couldn't make out from the beginning of the song that it was actually that song. When the chorus started, I remembered why I hated this song and within a split second I skipped to the next track. Shweta said that she loved that song and that she wants to listen to it. From the expression on my face, she just could make out that I didn't like that song for some reason, a reason beyond the kind of music that was. I narrated ,
       I liked this song once upon a time Shweta. I hate it now. I was on a trip with my friends ( at least I considered them to be my friends.. really didn't know if the feeling was mutual ) and we were just randomly singing songs on the way. The girl who is special to me wants to sing this song and she did sing it pretty well, that thought just lasted for a freaking second, the guys who were friends with the other guy in her life were all like ' oooooo.... ' and they started associating the other guy with atif (don't really know how that works. I mean do people start associating a normal person with celebrities just because that person really likes them? WTF!, if I absolutely liked Sachin Tendulkar, would these people start associating me with Sachin Tendulkar every time he scored a century?Stupid to say the least.) and within three milliseconds my I Hate list got longer by three rows and they went like this
"I hate this song"
"I hate this singer" and obviously
"I hate that bastard".

Shweta, the friendly, always smiling girl she is, never really showed it on her face but she was kinda pissed and tired with my attitude. She immediately said " Can you stop finding reasons to be sad/not like something and find a reason to be happy/ like something.? ". That was a Anil Kumble googly. I had no clue what she meant. As far as my thinking went, however I reacted to that situation seemed natural to me and she didn't disagree with the third new entry in my I Hate list at least but the first and the second, she didn't like them one bit. She went on to give me some kind advice for the next ten minutes of which I was trying hard at least listen to if not grasp it completely while in the background all I could think of was that trip and how I started hating the song. Until recently I never fully understood what she was saying. I know now. Hating the song and the singer because of what happened  was totally irrational. I stopped listening to that song which I liked for almost a year since the trip. I gave up something that I liked whatever might be the situation that provoked it, it wasn't right.
It was not just the song. I found reasons to hate something, rather than looking beyond that reason and just accept and like something for what it actually is. I am very cynical by nature ( please look up the meaning of cynicism if you are not sure, no offense, I didn't know the correct meaning myself  ) and I can criticize each and everyone in this society ( I can even criticize Sachin.. I'm just that bad.. I've learned not to from the recent Greame Smith comments on Sachin and the reactions of the people ). I was born in the wrong century, maybe even the wrong millennium. I had to realize that there was no strength in criticizing and eventually hating each and everything in this society because in the time frame that I will be alive, there is absolutely no hope that the society will change for the better ( from my point of view ). I had to draw a line is what she meant. It's difficult to change my nature but I have to in order to survive. The organism that best adapted to the immediate environments has survived millions of years, so I guess another 35 years should be easy. But its easier said than done. Time probably is the only medicine. There could be a day in future where I can listen to that song, I HOPE.

Friends and Dreams

I seriously have no clue as to how exactly to start off a post in a blog. But anyways, everyone has their own style of writing and I have my own ( or not.. ).

There are about a billion people in India, about 60 lac in Bangalore city, about 40%(24 lac) are youth, about 5%(1.2 lac) of them fall into the same age group , about 1%(1200) stay in the same neighborhood. Thus, there are about 1200 people who potentially can be friends with one person through some kind of forum. At the least, there should be at least 1% (12 people) who are really close to this one person. Right.? Do you honestly think you have 12 real friends.? I don't think so. Maybe 1% do really have 12 friends, meaning 12 people in the whole of bangalore city have real friends (both quality and quantity wise). Most people's lives revolve around two to four people, which is max 33% of the expected value. If you have noticed, in theory I've taken the worst case scenarios into account but in reality, we are doing worse than the worst case. What is going wrong here.? To be honest I don't have a good answer as well. But it is happening. Many people feel lonely, unable to connect to people they meet in their daily lives, unable to really observe the happiness that potentially exists, unable to even feel human, lost as a pearl would be in the fuckin' ocean.

Just try to evaluate the situations from which friends became friends. Some of them , studied together in school. Some, studied together in college. Some, grew up in the same neighborhood. These friends I'm sure take the lion's share of the friendship cake of each individual. They all tend to fade away. School friends remain till college friends come, neighborhood friends remain until we live in the same neighborhood, college friends remain till college is on. Once you get a job, the friends there remain only till the next job. Yes they all remain what we think are friends, but are they really.? They are parts from your past. Meaning the present and future of your life does not have the same kinda space for them as they did originally (unless until the reason happens which I'm going to explain later). Ever wondered why this happens.?
I'll give you the answer. Just keep an open mind. Its because most of us have not followed our dreams or what we refer to as a journey towards our destiny. How does this affect our friendships. It does.

As always, I'll just pick a random example off the top of my head. But first, let me tell you that we ( referring to people living in the 21st century ) in general don't understand what dreams are. I'm sure you assumed I was talking about the dreams that we get while we are asleep. Nope that is not what I'm talking about. Nobody has understood the purpose of nightfall dreams for the mind or body. Nobody knows why it occurs. But it is beautiful isn't it? Ever wondered what a blind person would dream of? Ours, just a slide show of random pictures from our memory ( subconscious ). If you start considering the nightfall dreams as your real dreams, then you are just not using logic ( in other words.. you are, if not completely, stupid ). Why..? Just consider what the blind would dream. Research says, the blind dream of sounds, smell, taste and touch. Its just the same as ours, without the imagery (in my opinion, the imagery is what fucks everything up). Hope by now your have realized that if you consider your nightfall dreams as your real ones, then what dreams would the blind have.? To achieve new sounds? Does that sound at least remotely right? Phew.... Finally I think everyone is on the same page as me now. At least I assume.

Now the real dreams are those thoughts or those moments in future you are waiting to happen, those moments that gets you a feeling of longing for them even though they haven't taken place yet, those moments that could easily get you high on life. Aaahhh.. Now you know what I'm talking about, don't you? Now, what these moments might be, obviously differs from person to person. For example, some will dream of standing in front of the whole nation and take the oath to serve the country. Some, the moment where you will see tears of joy roll down your loved ones' eyes. Some, the moment where society is proven wrong and you are right (for a good cause of course). Some, the moment when your offspring says that he/she loves you. This is the real dream. Many of the smart people that I've come across have taken these things, written it down on toilet paper, wiped their asses with it and said "fuck all this, let's be realistic". Lets get a job that pays well ( its doesn't matter whether I like it or not as long as it gives me enough money to buy that fancy car), lets get married to whoever my parents agree upon ( mind you, this happens mostly in INDIA, a place where you are not taught values and virtues at least to survive, if not to flourish, you are not taught to find a mate for yourself, but one find day you are given the keys to a door behind which there awaits a relatively strange girl  with a glass of freaking milk to calm the male down, seriously I think its high time people realize that wine has better calming effect, and you are supposed to mate with her..??? does this sound right..??? in any universe..??? whatever happened to the theory of natural selection.??? people go against nature in every possible way and say in a very sarcastically ironic tone that its natural !!! ufff... I'm so off topic... I know... I know) , mate with her, produce offspring, start living with what I call a psuedo-family for the sake of it....!!
Where the fuck is the "natural" thing happening? And then we are supposed to behave like everything is natural?

Most of us have realized all this and yet continue to live in the same manner.You must be all "So? What do you suggest we do Mr. Smarty Pants?" Simple. I found one little flaw in APJ Abdul Kalam's motto for life "Keep dreaming" or something like this. I suggest that it should be "Keep living your dreams". Now that I think of it, I guess he meant the same, but you know us people,we always hear good things with a logic cap on and wrong things with an emotional cap on.

Once you start living your dreams, you will find friends for life.They will help you get to your dream and you will help them. You will never feel lonely again. You will find the song "what a wonderful world" to be true. It won't matter if their dreams are not in line with yours. Its the trying of living your dreams that will keep the human connection alive. The journey towards your dream will give experiences beyond your wildest imagination.


And of course, if you dream of the wrong things and start living them, there will be chaos.

thought-chaining

       Hi y'all... I'm back after two weeks... with some more deep shit........ ( u must be like "expected !! ufff..." ).
And btw, if you have googled the title of this post, then u are most probably suffering from the "googler syndrome". The rest of the blog is about thought chaining , so in case u are wondering what googler syndrome is ( i just hope you did not google that as well.. lol ), its what i use to refer to people whose lives revolve around google. This has become a habit to such an extent that sometimes, these people even search the complete url over google ( funny, isn't it...?). Next they might even type 2 + 2 on google and search for an answer!. I should probably write a separate post on googler syndrome. Lets move on to the main event.
* and btw, thought chaining and googler syndrome are my own newly created words and they have a GNU Licence making it completely open source so anyone can use it in any context they think is suited in... :P :) Sorry if you are one of those people who get bugged with software humor.


       Do you notice people getting lost in thought.? Well if you just thought ,"Duh..!, everyone knows that. Why am I reading about something that is so common.?", read on. I'm sure that I'll make you think otherwise.
Let me take an example. Everyone loves this one.
The scene :  A college-going guy who is not currently interested in any girl finds a girl who just says Hi everyday and smiles at him every time he passes by. After a few days, the guy starts to think that he can have a real conversation the next time. After the conversation, the comfort level increases leading to friendship, close friendship etc etc(and what not.? people start using the word friend if they exchanged a couple of "HIs" over facebook chat). Now behind the scenes, its the guys thought-chaining which has lead him to this position. So.? Lets see how this works.
      The first time the girl said HI, the guy started to think "Oh, she just said HI and smiled at me.". He could have just stopped there and felt good about himself. But you know it ain't gonna stop there. "Hmmm... I wonder if she is single.? And I wonder if she is looking for a boyfriend.?". He could have stopped here ( Trust me girls, if you were expecting something like this "Hmmm.... She seems nice. Maybe we could be friends" from the guy , then you have no idea about the way guys think..There could be some exceptional cases like myself and many of my friends but the truth is even we give into the male nature sometimes. After all we are human too.. :P :) ). Lets get back. "The next time I see her I should probably make a move and become friends with her and get her phone number". He could have stopped here too. "If she stays close by, we could hang out in the evenings and eventually go to movies and have dinner at nice restaurants". This will just go on and on. "Then if everything turns out well, maybe she'll be my girlfriend". "If we end up dating for more than a year, Marriage is on the cards". "I might have two beautiful kids with her". etc etc...............
       Do you see how one thought lead to another. This is thought-chaining. The guy is actually not aware of what is happening here. And all this would have happened the second the girl smiled at him. Whether the guy ends up taking actions or not depends on various things and is not of concern here. Sir, now that we know what thought-chaining is, would you also please explain to us why you have spent so much time writing about this and we reading it..? Certainly
       Why does this happen and how do we control it? This happens because there is no conclusion to the thoughts. Conclusion can be done at any stage of this thought-chain depending on your needs and wants. Once a thought-chain is concluded, it will no longer spawn new related thoughts. In the boy's case, he could have concluded his thoughts at each of the sentences above and returned back to normalcy ( where logic precedes emotion ). Let us consider that the boy stopped at "Oh, she just said HI and smiled at me.". Conclusion he should have drawn ( at least for his own good in this scene ) : "I must be looking smart today." Simple and easy conclusion which will save lot of thought and time. You might say this conclusion is a little too self centered. But it works. Lets say he stopped at this "If she stays close by, we could hang out in the evenings and eventually go to movies and have dinner at nice restaurants". Nothing wrong here too. He can conclude : "Cool, let me talk to her and get to know her first." A logical conclusion. End of thought-chain. Return to normalcy.
      This thought-chaining process is what gets us to be obsessed about anything ( however insignificant it is in reality becomes significant due to this process of continuously spawning new thoughts related to just one thought ). And once obsessed about something, its nearly impossible to give up this obsession for a normal human. In the above case ,the most probable thing that would happen due to his thought-chaining is, getting obsessed with her and forcing himself to believe that he loves her until one day, when reality hits him leading to a breakup associated with emotional trauma.
      Also notice, without his conscious knowledge, his expectations for things to turn out for him as thought about in the thought-chain just came into existence only because he didn't conclude. Failed expectations also ends up in causing severe emotional trauma and hurts self-confidence of a person. And the reason is you alone. Nothing else.
      This applies to every thing that we think about. I also understand that it is impossible to conclude every thought chain.But when this thought is something that is important in terms of how your life is going to turn out, remember to have a logical conclusion to that thought-chain, the only way to remain sane.


Simpler example : You see someone ( and that someone happens to be an acquaintance ) with a cool phone ( lets say iPhone ). You have always known that iPhone is a cool phone. But when you saw it in the hands of the acquaintance and you noticed how other people around gave it a lot of attention, your mind begins to think that even you need to own one ( whatever may be the reason, it wants the phone ). If you notice carefully, you don't need the iPhone. But your thought-chain would probably make you buy one and would be as follows: "Hmm. That is a nice phone. Its cool". " Everybody loves that phone ". " How much would that phone cost? ". Now his thought-chain takes a break to find out more details of the phone and that the phone is somewhat affordable if he saves up on some money. " I could probably cut down on some things and save up for two months and could get that phone ". " Then I could become friends with that other guy who has the phone and get to know a lot more people and in turn become popular myself " . This can go in any direction depending on the person, but always there is a thought-chain. The guy should have concluded saying " Yes , the phone is cool, but I know that eventually every gadget is going to be outdated and moreover whatever features it offers, I'm not going to use them all. The phone I have now serves the purpose of my needs that arise from a phone". That is it. End of thought-chain. The person who didn't conclude would end up buying one even if he has absolutely no need and later would realize that most of his expectations would not come true. This basically is the trick of advertising as well.
So conclude ( and logically that is ).

Hope I'm not confusing you all with my complex to notice, yet simple to understand type-of theories. Will catcha soon. Byee.