Dec 19, 2012

Destiny, crowds and other things

This blog is not about anything in particular but about a lot of different things.  More than anything, it is a way for me to catch up with myself which I am not too good at doing on a regular basis.  And I think it makes a world of difference for me to do this catching up. Sort of clarifies things, acts as a mind detox operation and also lets me look at myself better than I am able to, every morning in the mirror.

So, Destiny figures in the blog title because of a major event that has just happened to me.  My placement - the Final Placement! Yes.  I can't divulge the happy details of the size of the package on such a public forum, but I must tell you, it is something I am grateful to God for.

Destiny had a role to play, definitely.  One, because a lot of things came together to make it happen.  My being on my on...more about which, later in this blog itself; then my having realized that cause and effect doesn't work the way we see it; and my being in a state of mind to welcome anything that I was faced with.

I am not the euphoric kind when it comes to happy times, but I do feel miserable when things go wrong.  However, standing back up to take on my circumstances is also a trait I have.  And that was what I did, when time and again, I kept applying to one company after another and kept performing decently, yet couldn't see myself being selected in any of them. A simple belief, that God does have something in store and these are but necessary experiences of failure that I must pass through, helped me get on, coupled of course, with inspirational sms'es by my brother and motivating words of my dear chachu.

About what I said - on my own - that has been the greatest discovery of my life.  I am the kind who always feels very self-sufficient, especially when it comes to my personal and individual needs.  So, for me, friendship is never about 'needs' but about someone to share things with, just a light happy time or moment together.

But alas!  Somehow, my perfectionist and work-obsessed nature has always made me a go-to person for any peer to get their things done.  And hence I have never made too many of the kind of friends that would look at me as merely the source of a nice happy time.  Hypocritically, these very friends are also the ones who vehemently denounce me for the very workaholic nature that they so willingly and earnestly use to their own benefit!

So I finally decided to call it off.  And strangely I have found an eerie sort of peace in such a state of things.  I am not any more tied to any body or any individual.  In fact I have begun to see a difference in how individuals and crowds behave.  I conclude, that crowds are more dependable than individuals are.  There is some sort of security you can seek in the crowd, but an individual, you can never trust.  This is so, because the crowd is always the average of all individuals, and somehow, nature has a way of balancing things out.

My hostel room in MICA campus is situated in a very crowd-frequented position, and hence, I have the luxury of gauging the moods of the crowd every now and then.  In a peculiar way, I find myself gradually becoming dependent on this one-way communication that they have with me, without them even being aware of it.
And I am not afraid of this sort of dependence, because as far as I understand, crowds are always more consistent in their behavior than individuals.

I guess it is in line with the theory of 'normal distribution' no matter what the case be, if large enough sample is taken, there ought to be some averages and they tend to fall in some sort of symmetrical and predictable pattern.

Thus I am reminded of Rudyard Kipling's lines from the poem If: "If all men count with you but none too much".  It means that you should behave or value all equally and not give any special attention to any one or a few ones; because as concluded, crowds are dependable, individuals are not.

Now about those Other things! Yah. This is meant about how your life is just open for anybody and everybody to criticise, comment on, or predict. When things go well for you, people have a way of instilling doubts and uncertainties in your mind.  And when things go wrong with you, they have a way of showing you the brighter side or consoling you.  Even here, they seem to take it upon themselves to balance out the effects, good or bad, of any occurrences in your life.  So, if you are the unready sort, you will find yourself grappling with these cognitive dissonance creating-energy consuming explanations being solved by your very tired brain.

So being deaf to others has many advantages especially when they are passing a comment on something that pertains to your decisions, be them past ones, ongoing ones or future ones.