Logic Comes To The Rescue

School vs Life

1. Strong feelings make us say or commit to things.
2. Other strong feelings make us do things (which sometimes run counter to what we said or committed to earlier).
3. Our logical mind resolves the issue by explaining how our circumstances constrained our actions.

In the absence of the logical explanation (3 above) the person is left looking silly - having said something and done something else.

It's the logical mind in strongly emotional people that helps them survive the tricky situation that is created (1 and 2 above) and get out of it elegantly. So it looks like the commitment was given in good faith, something else was done only because of circumstances. 

The focus is left on the good intentions and taken away from actions not leading to the intentions being fulfilled.

Animals are aware of only point no. 2 - the action which in their case is about eating and procreation. Humans have identified points 1 and 3 as important activities other than point 2. 

It's point no. 2 where we meet expectations or in this case fall below expectations. When at school, we are graded based on how much we met expectations. Points 1 and 3 don't play much part in our student lives.
In our adult life, it's how well we handle points 1 and 3 that determine our success, not how well we meet expectations. 

 Loosely we can term point 2 as hard skills. Points 1 and 3 are the soft skills.

Man And Animals - Accepting As They Are

Sometimes we wonder why someone behaves so differently, absurd it might seem to us.

Of course we realize later that to the other person their behavior was perfectly justified. 

It's just that we are unable at times to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. Now why is this so difficult? Do the shoes bite? Is the size not same as ours? This is a question that's been on my mind for a long time   Why do we, each one of us, think and feel so differently from others?

To address this question we have to look at cats, dogs, birds, fish etc. Why do dogs behave differently from cats? Or birds from fish? It's because each is a different species. Cats won't behave like dogs nor like fish or birds. Each of these has evolved differently and each has its own nature. Two different species aren't similar.

When it comes to people, we can take this analogy even farther. Each person is like a different species even if all people have 2 legs, 2 hands,2 eyes, 1 mouth etc. Each person is born with a unique set of genes and has had a unique set of experiences in their life.

The genes that you were born with and the experiences that you faced in your life hitherto are different from those that I was born with and faces. You are logically expected to be different, hence, from me in your values, your thoughts, your conditioning, your responses to a situation.

This is so logical, yet so difficult for my heart to accept. It's kind boggling.

We don't say a crocodile or a lion or a shark is cruel. We use different words to describe them. We may say they are carnivores or that they eat so many kilos of meat a day or that they are cannibals and eat their own siblings. But we do not use the word sweet, cruel etc to describe them.

Words like sweet (as in nature) or cruel are used to describe only those whose nature is quite different from the average of their species.

You don't have a vegetarian shark, nor a lion that is a sanyasi etc. Sharks are alike, at least to us they seem that way. 

Maybe, if a shark were to write a blog such as this it may understand that each shark is different from another and hence it may also use differentiating words such as cruel, brave, sweet etc to describe other sharks. 

But to us human beings, all sharks are similar, all lions are similar and so on. Here we use neutral or objective words to describe them - "eat meat", "have large teeth" etc.

But to describe each of us, human beings, we frequently use subjective words. Words that help describe how different each of us is.

But imagine if, as I wrote earlier, each of us is a different species. We would then describe others around us the same way we describe other species. 

Words such as galling, obnoxious, saintly, liar (or sweet / cruel) etc would hardly be used to describe other people. We would describe others the same way we describe other species.

So what's the big deal?

We do not expect other species to change their nature, language, religion, character etc. We know it's not possible. If we understand and accept that each one of us is really a different species, we won't expect others to change. We wont have New Year resolutions.

Does this mean we would love everyone and accept everyone? Yes, the same way we love all peacocks, whales and snakes. Meaning we understand each species has certain characteristics which will not change any time soon. We decide which ones to be close to and which ones to avoid. And which ones to watch from a distance with a binocular. 

Can we digest this thought? So difficult. 

It's our social nature that makes it difficult to accept this. We WANT to love some people and hate some others. Maybe the human beings who are least social can understand the perspective of treating other human beings as just another species - just different from themselves, nothing inherently good or bad. 

Is this a good idea or bad - to treat other people as another species?
We have come across people who would suggest to us, when we are having relationship issues, to take people as they are. What does this mean essentially? Is it not the same as treating others as another species - in the sense that we ought not expect them to change?

Which of us treats other people as they are? Those of us who are open or those who are judgemental? Does treating another human as another species imply alienation or acceptance?

End note
Just imagine. The expression "we human beings" would mean nothing if we treat other people as other species.

Analysis and Description - What, When, Who, Where and How.

While talking to people we realize that some of them (typically SF) are exceedingly good at describing things.

Others (NT) are very good at analyzing things.

To the average audience, they seem similar. The first set are good at recounting the What, When, Who, Where and How.

The second set go about explaining the Why. 

When done eloquently and nicely, the What, When, Who, Where and How description is as interesting as the Analysis of Why. 

The funny thing is that the two sets of people bore each other.

The first set thinks of the How and especially the When, Who, Where and How as a surrogate for Why. The second set desires brevity so much that it replaces all the others with its Why thus missing the sensory picture.

Standards Of Evaluation

A friend of mine, actually a 12 year old girl, had invited a class mate of hers home to fo homework and share lunch. My friend's mom had cooked an elaborate meal for get daughter and daughter's friend.

The friend was supposed to cone at 9AM on Sunday. But the friend, along with her mom, came at noon. And they had not called to say that they would be delayed. My friend's mom had been waiting for her daughter's friend to come so she could go out to see her doctor. Because of the 3 hour delay, she had to cancel the doctor's appointment. 

My friend, a very sweet girl, recounted what happened to me. 

When finally her friend came with her mom at noon, my friend's mom told them that she had been waiting for them since 9AM and that they should have called and informed of the delay. The guests, mother and daughter, felt very bad at being admonished - my friend could see it in their faces.

My friend told me that her mom is always like that. Very hard. My friend had felt very bad about her mom's behavior.

I asked my friend. Did she feel anything that her mom had cooked an elaborate lunch for her and her friend and that because of the delay her mom had missed the doctor's appointment? Her mom apparently has little time during the week for personal stuff, she works somewhere.

My friend told me she didn't realize that her mom had been affected in the first place. My friend is a person who understands only sweetness. Being sweet is character for her. And being harsh or hard is not good.

She reacted to the hurt in the visitors' face, she saw that. She reacted to the harsh comments of her mom, she heard that.

But the fact that the mom's personal stuff had gone awry was not obvious to her because that was not told. Her mom's face did not show her, mom's, pain. So my friend didn't know about that.

Character, I explained to my friend,  is not about just being sweet. 

Every human being thinks of what he has and proud of as what is most important in a human being.

If I am a sweet person and know that i am sweet and proud of it, then I evaluate every person on how sweet they are. Sweetness is what becomes most important to me in a human being.

If what i am proud of is my intelligence and integrity, then that becomes the most important thing to me. I evaluate people based on how much intelligence and integrity they have.

If I love taking care of people and if I am good at it, I evaluate everyone based on how caring they are.

And so on.

The standards of evaluation depend on each person's character.

Insensitivity to the unexpressed seems to be a hallmark of sweet people. Or, is it that when you are tuned off you don't hear what is not explicitly expressed? Then when someone doesn't hear you, not once, not twice, but often then you may conclude that they are not that into you.

My friend isn't that into her mother. 

And all these thoughts occurred to me just because the guests arrived 3 hours late!!

Puzzle: Network, Evolution, SIM, Sperm

I have a Nokia dual SIM feature phone (not Android) in which I have inserted one Airtel and one BSNL SIM card.

Now, since this morning I find that my Airtel SIM in the phone is not enabled. While BSNL is fine. It's not as though the Airtel Network is unavailable but the whole SIM is disabled at home. When i go about 4kms away from home, the Airtel SIM gets enabled and everything is normal. I tried this twice today - 4km in two different directions. The phone worked fine but come closer to home, it gets disabled.


I checked another phone with an Airtel SIM. As expected it works perfectly fine in my house while at the same time the Airtel SIM in Nokia is disabled.

The question is why.

Is it a SIM problem? Is it a phone problem? Is it a network problem?

Should i change my house? Because of an issue with a Rs1000 phone or a Rs25 SIM issue? That doesn't make sense.

Is it possible that the real culprit is the BSNL SIM which disables the Airtel SIM near my house intentionally - so that I give up in frustration and end up porting my Airtel to BSNL?

I am reminded of a certain behavior in some animals. Males in certain species, before copulating with a female, remove any residual sperm residing inside the female in order to ensure that the female is impregnated with its own sperm and not by that of the other male. 

Once we move into a house, don't we clean it to ensure that nothing of the previous tenants remains? Exactly the same.

The only males that seem to clean house are males of certain species - during, rather before, copulation. 

Is BSNL doing something similar in my phone?

Today, 15th July, I visited Airtel showroom. I got a fix from them. They changed my network settings on the phone from automatic to manual and that seemed to solve the issue. 

I guess BSNL didn't do any hanky panky. Whew...

As to why automatic Network selection should create some hanky panky in my phone, I have no clue.

World Cup Cricket Analysis Semis And Finals 2019

I was discussing with a friend.

Friend: It looks as though India has to not only play NZ on Tuesday and win, but also play against the weather in Old Trafford  (Manchester) because the weather forecast for Tuesday does not sound good.

I wonder what will happen if one side does not get to play fully even by the Duckworth Lewis method. 

Will they decide who the winner is based on simply which side has the more attractive jersey? Or to be even more facetious, which of the two captains is the better looking one. I can go on.......

Me: One more option: there may be a rematch, say a T20 version (held later that night or the following day)  for the 3 remaining knockout matches.

Friend: It does not have to be for all the three remaining matches, it can be just for the matches that are rained off.

I am scratching my head. Is this how communication between 2 people goes awry?

Should I have instead added: IN CASE ANY OR ALL OF THE NEXT 3 MATCHES FACE THE ISSUE OF RAIN / ACT OF GOD THAT THREATENS A NO RESULT GAME THEN FOR SUCH MATCHe (one more option...)? THIS OPTION TO BE EXERCISED ONLY IF THERE IS A PROBLEM DUE TO WEATHER OR OTHER EVENTS OUTSIDE OF OUR CONTROL. UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS, THIS OPTION IS NOT TO BE CONSIDERED. 

Whew.

But if I were to reflect a little more I wonder. Why did my friend think that I gave my option as unconditional regardless of how the weather was. Maybe she was just wary of overkill and being careful and didn't want any misinterpretation.

Caregiving

Is it such a difficult thing to be an effective caregiver? 

How come the cared one is hopping mad, just wanting to drop dead and the so called caring one isn't really happy?

Is this the way it always is? What does one do when one has to be a caregiver and there is no other viable option and unfortunately one isn't the best of empathetic caregivers? 

What if the cared for isn't empathetic and looks at the caregiver only as a factotum? But should this matter to an effective caregiver? Given the situation, a caregiver cannot look for an ideal or even a nice environment. 

An ideal situation is when both can accept the situation as tough but look forward to dealing with it. When the patient is mostly comatose and the 3-4 hours of consciousness is filled with pain, hallucination and bitterness it's painful for the caregiver too.

One sees the situation where the cared for is on life support and almost in a coma - there being hardly any executive function, only biological functions in action. And hallucinations. Can it get worse?

A situation where both look forward to the end of the situation is so awful one feels retching. 

But one interesting thing is that the act of caregiving itself has been a Caring 101 course for the caregiver.

Additional reading

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/09/was-i-right-divorce-my-dying-wife/597604/