Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Friends: Stand By Me

What legacy I will leave after my death. That question bother me. I can give power, wealth and ego but not my friends. I am feeling that I will die in few years. Just an intuition. I want to express my feeling about my friends in cinematic way as a last note from the film 'Stand by Me'.

Stand By Me is a story of how one event can unexpectedly change lives. It seems to be a story about friends and how important they are, but this possible theme is clearly dispelled in a line from the narration spoken at the end of the film :–

`As time went on, we saw less and less of Teddy and Vern, until eventually they became just two more faces in the halls. It happens sometimes, friends come in and out of your life like busboys at a restaurant.'

Instead, this time less film is about learning from a life changing experience and actually making changes or modifying your life in some way because of it. I am blessed with really good friends who accepted me as I was and cared for me. This post is dedicated to all of mine friends especially intimate ones : Vishu, Sanju, VVS, Chaudhary, Golu, AGP, chammo, kunal, hathi, chandan, and bond. This song is for my friends whom I will never let down:-

Creativity -Search for meaning

People who achieve great success in any discipline - science, business, education, the arts, etc. are always creative. It makes sense to define the creative part of any intellectual endeavor as 'looking for patterns and relationships or trying to create them. I think it does suggest that the definition of "idea" as "a new combination of existing elements" is indeed true. The first is conscious, periodic and primarily externally motivated. The second is unconscious, ongoing and primarily internally motivated.

Truly creative people create not because they want to, but because they have to. They are in a constant state of wondering why, asking what if, and looking for meaning. When meaning isn't apparent, they have to find a way to create it. Creators are meaning makers. They’re in an ongoing (and perhaps neurotic) pursuit of existential stasis.

The search for meaning is inherently emotionally and psychologically volatile. That may be why creative masters as an archetype are moody, insecure and depressed. In fact, as Eric Maisel points out in his intriguing book "The Van Gogh Blues," it's a cliché that creativity and depression go hand-in-hand. But clichés are the children of truth. Maisel writes: "... creators are not necessarily afflicted with some biological disease or psychological disorder that causes them to experience depression at the alarming rates we see. They experience depression simply because they are caught up in a struggle to make life seem meaningful to them. People for whom meaning is no problem are less likely to experience depression. But for creators, losses of meaning and doubts about life's meaningfulness are persistent problems - even the root causes of their depression... Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning. ... Not creating is depressing because [creators are] not making meaning when [they are] not creating."

Thanks to Nimmy for providing weblink. Click here for Source of the article.

Thought of the day: Be yourself, be natural. It is far easier than pretending to be someone else.

What does social democracy mean?

It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality, equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many.

The constitution drafted under the chairmanship of Dr. Ambedkar allows equality, liberity, fraternity and justice to every Indian citizen but the law enforcing agencies are in the hands of the elite class. Some part of the Indian bureaucracy and English speaking media is possibly made up of RNIs (Resident Non-Indians), whose children and future, they have ’secured’ in the West – much like the indifferent westener. And this may be the one quality, that possibly is the one thing, that the RNIs and foreigners share – indifference to the fate of the country.