https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WnNJaYYF16M&feature=youtu.be
A friend sent me this video. When I was watching it, I had a strange feeling
What I do while chatting online is like that man.
Jisko samajh aaye theek hai. Some get it. Others think I am very rude!
Tareeke alag hain. On the surface the man is doing face to face there. Very beautiful house, handsome man etc. In my case no face to face. No picture. Par maqsad kafi hadh tak ek.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/: "Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need," the researchers, which include Stanford University's Jennifer Aaker and Emily Garbinsky, write. What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans,
I had a very interesting conversation with a friend about the current Ukraine situation and Indian stance.
Friend: Modi's condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding there will slightly soften the West's attitude to India. India's decision to sit on the fence in the UN Security Council resolution to condemn Russia did not go down very well in the West.
Me: India is a non entity.
Friend: India may not be as much of a non-entity as you think. If it was, why did the West criticise their recent decision? Nobody criticised North Korea, Sri Lanka etc.
Me: True to some extent. The only way India makes a difference in this equation is that it may buy oil from Russia (but not food grains, India itself exports that and hence competes against Russia). Plus the defence contracts and [India's need for] spares will provide revenue to Russia. I doubt India will [in future] buy any military requirements from Russia. Otherwise who gives a damn whether India votes for Russia or against.
Friend: It's all about the impression that people have about India. We do want the world to think of India as democratic, liberal (now under threat according to the West), has freedom of speech, independent press - all features constituting motherhood and apple pie. Don't we?
Me: :) you are talking about what we want. I am talking about what is.
Friend: Yes to get what we want, we want to be seen to be on the right.
The parts in italics are so revealing, eye opening.
Friend: Referring to the article above: "This is one of the numerous articles we have seen recently about why democracy is still motherhood and apple pie! You asked the other day, I am sure only to engage in constructive discussion, about the point of this war because Ukraine cannot win on its own because of Russian military superiority. This tells us why."
I had a dilemma. I consider myself a very judgmental person while many friends would tell me they were comfortable with me cause i was not judgmental and that they could let their guards down. I was confused.
Then I read this today.
https://www.facebook.com/102287058636236/posts/252378670293740/
Maybe the judging that people talk about is an emotional variety. Or non-righteous variety ((Answer to What do you mean about "judging people"? by Heather Jensen https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-mean-about-judging-people/answer/Heather-Jensen-31?ch=15&oid=279768304&share=a1e70c5e&srid=JCl2&target_type=answer). The emotional variety is inconsistently applied and generally used to taunt. And hence perhaps is more hurtful than the righteous judgment. This example of emotional judging is interesting: Answer to What does it mean to judge someone? by Ikshita Khanna
While I consider myself very judgmental perhaps as the Quora article indicates, I might indulge in righteous judgment, subjecting myself to the same rules that I apply to everyone. And may be this is more acceptable to people. That's why maybe friends tell me I don't judge them
One thing I do not do is look at other people's circumstance (unlike what Heather says in the Quora article). The moment we empathise, we cannot judge righteously.
She is very emotional.
Has a complete lack of understanding of personal responsibility in the context of cause and effect.
Imagine someone raped me. I slapped him. And then explains what happened that he did such a thing to me. We discuss it. And then he questions me why I slapped him. And that's all he remembers of the event. Not what he did earlier.
This is how she is. Doesn't take responsibility for her action at all.
A liar, emotionally manipulative. Isn't capable of generosity. In case of emergency, would want to make sure she doesn't get stressed. Hates stress to herself. Extremely poor sleeper.
Is capable of moving from saying she loves someone to the point where she wants to sleep with someone else in the space of 5 minutes.
Emotionally manipulative enough to know how to guide someone to propose to her and get him to want to sleep with her - her lack of touch with reality would make her claim that the other person proposed all on his own. When she explained her plan to get intimate with her old flame it was eye opening.
Nice enough that her kids are comfortable with her and like spending time with her. Has a bunch of friends and colleagues that she is in regular touch with.
Her emotional needs are insatiable. Likely pointing to NPD and or BPD while she jokingly referred to bipolar in herself.
If someone has an emergency she would say she will be there. And she would mean it literally. She will be there. Not doing much, perhaps texting or otherwise keeping herself engaged in things not relevant to the emergency.
Can't be relied upon to be consistently dependable and organized.
Is very bright and intuitive.
She has a tendency to take key words out of a sentence and create a different meaning out of the sentence.
For example, if someone said they disliked prostitutes taking money for sex she might interpret that to mean that the person called her a prostitute.
Has a huge void inside her like an emotional black hole and she seeks to fill it. She needs a person who will live for her, whether she can or will reciprocate is something she really doesn't much care about. Dedication to any person or thing doesn't come easily to her.
The love she proclaims that she has for an adult is the love that a woman has for chocolate. Not the love that a mother has for a child.
While her knowledge of maths and numbers is fairly limited, a maths problem at the level of grade 5 may be difficult for her, she says she teaches her children (in class 9) maths. This is an example of how she misrepresents reality. The truth perhaps (a guess) is that she sits with them and keeps them company and suggests that the children read this book or call up that friend to solve the problem and makes tea for them. Most mothers do this. This is not teaching maths.
Claims that she knows a language when she can understand it at best and hardly speak it. This claim wasn't made in jest.
She said that her husband complained to her that she wasn't all there with him ever. She acknowledged that this was so.
She is preoccupied with her own emotions. Even when with her so called ideal man she said she would be on dating site chatting up others.
While she claims she is a very good housewife and mother, my belief is she spends way too much time with her own activities.
In short, a very high maintenance person. She is used to a very high class of living. A kind that she most likely cannot get with her own efforts.
All the good things in her life have been provided for to her. Her best accomplishments would not be commensurate with what she has been given.
She is not much bound my normal sense of restraint. She stays in the marital home because of her needs for the comforts that it provides while disliking the provider. I am sure she thinks she is an equal to "the provider" because she is married to him and has borne his children.
She has a high sense of self worth, perhaps out of very high needs. She is likely to suck the life out of any adult who is close to her so much so that they may wish to have her leave soon. There is a good amount of arrogance - the casual use of words that put down others.
While she asserts that people hurt her often and that she is a doormat, I think she hurts others much more often.
She claims that in relationships she assumes the guilt whenever there is an issue. But she frequently blames the other party for the issues. Her behaviour, according to her, have not been the cause but then she says she assumes the guilt, giving herself a saintly aura.
She comes very close to a person having a personality disorder. She claims she never gets angry. She is capable of extremely intense emotions including anger.
Relationship with her ideal man is more of satisfying her own needs and would involve little of satisfying his.
She is self centred, unempathetic, extremely needy, controlling. And constantly on an emotional rollercoaster.
A relevant article in this context: https://www.ckju.net/en/dossier/machiavellianism-what-it-how-recognize-and-cope-machiavellians
She is certainly not psychopathic.
In summary, what she says doesn't seem authentic. Her words can't be taken at face value.
She said she was raised in a very loving family lacking nothing that a child would want.
Why then? What happened? How did she turn out this way?
Additional reading:
https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2021/10/to-lizard-with-love.html
Today a garden lizard happened to enter the back side of my house. It stood on its legs a few inches from the ground with a tail about 4 inches long, longer than it's body.
Its posture looked like that of a miniature dinosaur. Inside my house it tried to find it's way about but was locked in the wash area with buckets and brooms and no way out except through an iron gate through which it had come in. I was standing at the gate encouraging it to get out, but the lizard was wary. I poured a mug of water over it and it tried to avoid getting wet and ran towards the gate but didn't quite reach the gate since I was standing there.
I poured a few more mugs over the lizard and stood out of it's way and finally the lizard escaped outside. Both of us heaved sighs of relief.
We like our natural habitats and our regular residents. Strange ones are no no.
A friend of mine told me today that I was her only friend whom she could laugh with, with no pretensions.
I have been told by many friends that they could just be themselves with me. (Of course I have also been told by one friend that talking to me was like talking to a piece of furniture! And hence she could share anything with me while she would be cagey about sharing stuff with others.)
That brings the question: what's so special or unique in me that people can be themselves with me? Do I not judge people? Of course I do, all the time and my friends are quite aware of my tendency to judge. So why me? Why no pretensions?
I had to scratch my hair, what little there is of it.
Conversation is like a dance.
If you can think of a dance: a ballroom dance (like the Edelweiss in Sound of Music) and compare it to a brisk walk. You will see the difference. Most of us would be very wary of dancing in a ballroom than a walk
The former requires elegance, you have to dance nicely. While walking, on the other hand, there are no strict rules to be followed. You can be yourself.
I am a person with little emotional intelligence unlike others. Talking to me is like taking a brisk walk. Talking to others is like dancing in a ballroom.
An environment of inelegance lets you relax. You don't have to dress up, you don't have to follow protocols. Though, it's quite likely that elegant people may not prefer inelegance all the time.
That perhaps explains why many people tell me that they can be themselves with me.
Boohoo, I will only be a walk and never a ballroom. Bye bye, Edelweiss.
But then I am easier to talk to and nice, as a change. Emotional unintelligence does have its use!
We react to others' statements in two ways.
1. Detect if the statement is true or not.
2. See if the statement is in good taste or not. Then we respond that their statement hurt us or that they were being judgmental. In this case, we don't look at the veracity of the statement but at whether it was in good taste. By focusing on the "good taste" we take the discussion away from facts to one of emotions.
A kind of people interest me immensely. They are extremely emotional, expressive (I am not sure if they are all extroverted but they are definitely very expressive). A common pattern I have found in them is that they are highly competitive in emotions. Lemme explain that. You are not going to ever be able to establish with them that your pain, your suffering was higher.
The first time I realised something strange was when a cousin of mine said "I wouldn't wish this [her sister, who was in her late 40s, had died that day] on my worst enemy". This was about 10 to 15 years ago. What my cousin said kept playing back in my head in the days and years to come and I often wondered about her phraseology. It's the equivalent of arrogating to oneself the gold medal for having suffered.
We come to the next incident. My friend's uncle had died, around the same time as the previous incident. My friend was totally distraught and she couldn't think of anything else. It took her couple of weeks to recover, while I went about my life. In the same period, my cousin mentioned earlier had died, another cousin had had her second leg also amputated. I was at the hospital prior to the surgery. The previous night my aunt had died and had spent the previous day attending the cremation. But then my friend's pain was much more. Pain isn't like weight or height which are objective. If your height is 170cm and mine is 175cm, I can claim rightfully that I am taller than you. But with pain or any emotion there is no comparison possible. Emotions can't even be objectively measured. You get a measure of the emotion by the intensity of self declaration. For example, "I am hurting", "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy" or beating yourself on your tummy with your palms - each of these indicate differing levels of pains.
And today I met a cousin after a long time. His wife had died last year of Covid. His father had died towards the end of 2019 out of natural causes, having been in a bad shape and in coma in the hospital for a week prior to his death. His wife had gone through terrible pain because of comorbidities before finally catching Covid. We spoke for about 20 minutes. My cousin was feeling very bad and about his wife and his father, both of whom he had lost in the last one and a half years.
And like the two women I mentioned earlier, he was expressing "my pain is too horrible". But this time around I was processing his pain in real time. And I thought of all the people i know who had suffered worse but wouldn't express as much.
I believe they are all NF (as in MBTI). They don't do it for effect. They do it naturally. Their "exaggeration of their pain" is completely natural. The only thing is when I have slotted them into this group, I become wary of their pain and almost wait for their "pain" to be expressed.
These are not one off incidents. With each of the three people mentioned I have had multiple incidents of confession of high pain.
Amazing.
It is again very interesting that emotional people judge a work based not on how effective it was but on how much pain was undergone while doing it. So if you don't express pain while or after doing a difficult job, you don't get much credit for it. Hence emotional expression is important. When your wife chides you for the lack of it, pay heed.
Additional reading
The way things are right now in the country, the question "Is it my turn?" often pops up in my mind. My turn to get vaccinated, my turn to get hospitalized or to get the Covid virus, or to get an Oxygen cylinder or to get buried.
I have become more morbid reading news and more news.
But is this the way to be? There are other ways I could use my time (apart from doing my daily chores). Many people do volunteer work, they try to arrange for food, medicines, cylinders for people that need them.
Others learn new languages, attend online courses, take up new hobbies, teach online.
None of this seemed to be my cup of tea. I have always been an avid reader. Now in the past few months I have been reading novels almost every night on my Kindle. Is it useful? I don't know. But it definitely provides relaxation and diversion from the non-fiction (news, other articles) that I read extensively.
My genre is legal thrillers, action, thriller etc. I download free novels identified by bookbub.com and read them every night.
And then I forget all about Covid.
I track my money, investments on a monthly basis. After the markets plunged in Mar 2020, it was a rollercoaster ride for me, as it would have for anyone. And I had to constantly monitor what was happening to my money. Large cap to small cap stocks, gilt funds to ultra short term debt funds and money market funds - everything was volatile. I cut down on some types of investments, moved to other ones. And this active finance management continues till today.
I am not sure whether equity is safe or debt or gold or just overnight funds.
With this as the backdrop, I wondering this morning: how my investments as of Feb 2020 would be valued now assuming I had just gone to sleep in February and not made any changes. If I had not made any continuous changes to my portfolio I wanted to know how much less I would have now.
So I took my February 2020 data (units of each mutual fund, stocks etc) and applied today's NAV on those units. Guess how much I have more than the February 2020 investments at today's valuation?
Hardly any difference. The difference was very minor. I was aghast. Here, for 9 months I have played the role of an active fund manager. And I now realise that had I gone sleep for 9 months and woken up today, I would have been no worse off. That's quite humbling.
My time spent managing investments were an utter waste. I hope I atleast booked a good amount of capital losses (short term and long term) which would be useful while filling taxes for future years.
Moving on from finance to other things (such as social interactions), I wonder whether the same thing is true. Would my absence (and hence my presence) be irrelevant to others I interact with?
That's a scary thought. Is this common or usual? I mean the tendency to arrogate to ourselves a whole lot of efficacy or productivity when the reality is that the universe outside doesn't give a sh** (as was the case with my finance)?
If someone moves your cheese, is the best decision to just stay put? Rolling stone and moss and all that, huh?
There was one thing which I made a difference to. My emotions - I felt a sense of purpose with all the things I did in the last 9 months. That is a thing internal to me. By an external yardstick what I did counted for hardly anything. Is this the purpose of emotions and activity? To feel happy, sad or angry at minutae?
Perhaps the truth is that some few things we do do make a difference in the universe. The rest don't.
Acquired or complex emotions are different from simple emotions such as anger, pain, happiness which are present even in toddlers and in animals. These simple emotions are not learnt.
Complex emotions are interesting. Lot of things happen because of it. Most of our major initiatives, good and bad, happen because of complex emotions. Complex emotions may be better developed in P type and F type people (as in MBTI) people.
Complex emotions cause motivation, sensitivity, sacrifice, empathy, condescension, focus on (creating the right) image, white collar crime, blackmail, Dark Triad (Psychpathic / Machiavellian / Narcissistic behaviour) etc.
Insensitivity can be the result of T behaviour (because it doesn't think of how someone might feel) or of J behaviour (because it's too busy following rules to think of feelings) or of a F / P because they are too busy focusing on their own goals.
The complex behaviour needs the N (as in MBTI) trait to grow.
When a high energy combines with complex behaviour then these behaviours are intensely exhibited.
The greater the N, the higher the person is likely to focus on reaching the top of Maslow's pyramid. Reaching the top isn't always good or bad. People with high level of complex emotions may include Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Robert Clive, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi - an assorted bunch as we can see.
The diametric opposite of an NFP is an STJ. The latter (especially one with low energy) will be a very simple soul compared to the former - not necessarily a better soul but simpler.
An interesting conversation happened with my maid today. She was supposed to come at 8AM (that's her shift timing) and she has to come despite it being Christmas today. She came 20 minutes late. I called her in panic at 8:20 and she said she was just reaching my place. When she reached what happened, why she was late. She told me a little irritatedly that she had to change 3 buses and finally she had to hire an auto. This should be read in light of the fact that I had suggested she leave half an earlier last night, which she did.
In her response, there was no apology. She didn't say it was Christmas day and hence buses were infrequent and hence she got delayed and that it won't likely happen tomorrow or any other normal day. Her response basically talked about her issue (she had to spend more for the auto), her inconvenience (had to take 3 buses) and the indication being these issues are outside of her control and the inference being that what happened could very well repeat any other day.
The question of the shift time and adherence to it was hardly relevant in light of her issues.
She is probably 20 years old. I realised that by this age she has learned to respond emotionally, (but without anger) and unprofessionally. Unprofessional because there were no qualms about being late. Emotional because the entire thought process were about HER personal issues which were not relevant to her work here. A true P (as in MBTI)!
I saw this movie on tv today after many years. The saw it for the first time the year it was released - in 1992.
It was patriotic, had good songs. AR Rehman made his debut in this movie. Mani Ratnam himself was new.
My life was starting. I had just moved to a new city. I was just beginning my career.
It's now a generation later. Life looks so different now. So so so many things have happened in the intervening years. My professional career is long since over. The work I do is something I had never imagined, I hadn't studied for it. I hadn't even remotely imagined then what i would be doing today or how I would be today.
I guess
