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There are two abilities required to succeed in life – one is ‘to follow the wise aptly’ and another is ‘to suffer the fools gladly’.

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Wherever you are and whatever you do, there will always be a fool around you. But that fool won’t be just fooling around plainly, he will always be making life difficult for you – one act at a time. He would be busy corroding into your enthusiasm and creativity, passing satirical comments, listening selectively to suit his judgments, and talking at a pitch that is hard to match (forget about exceeding).

He will be more than happy to fight petty battles and win arguments which he himself would have initiated from his amazing ability to create one out of the blue. He will always be full of contradictions, unpredictability and inconsistency. However, he will spot each of these things in everyone around him, to quote it at just the right time to sabotage someone’s budding self-confidence, and to reinforce his already inflated ‘sense of self’.

Now, there are three ways to deal with this creature. First – pity him for what all he must have lost due to this special talent, while attributing it to factors that must have been beyond the control of the poor fellow. Second – see the utility of it by looking for the points in his usually inane remarks that you can use to improve yourself. And third – by seeing him as the agent sent by the almighty to test and better your will-power & patience.

Whichever you choose out of the three, just remember that…

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It is at best a ploy to address your own angst, because in any case… he gives a damn to it. 🙂

I feel bad when people try meditation for problems that can easily be solved by communication.

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The other day, in a café, a girl was telling her friend about her relationship problems. I happened to overhear the conversation (who doesn’t like harmless gossip! :-)). And then she proceeded to tell how she has to meditate for 1 hour every day to keep herself sane.

Believe me, from what I (over)heard, it was a classic case of silly ‘communication gap’ between two individuals that got created due to “reluctance to express” on one person’s part and ‘refusal to initiate’ on other’s part. As I heard her talking about her problem and meditation, I got reminded of an anecdote:

Actor Dustin Hoffman was famous for method acting. Once, in a film with actor Laurence Olivier, Hoffman told Olivier that he had actually not slept for 72 hours to do a scene in which character had supposedly stayed up for three days. “My dear boy,” replied Olivier, “why don’t you just try acting?” 🙂

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Honestly, that day, I too felt like getting up, walking up to her, and telling…

“My dear girl, why don’t you just try communicating?” 🙂

Sometimes, over-analysis doesn’t solve a problem; it itself becomes a problem.   

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The other day, while explaining a behavioral concept in a session, I got reminded of this amusing incident from my early teenage.

It was a typical day of summer-vacation for me. On a hot evening, my uncle sat in his favorite spot on the mat and I sat right in front of him. There were also two of his friends who were sitting in the same room but were doing their own things. One was reading newspaper and the other must be doing something similar, which I don’t remember.

I and my uncle were talking about something and the discussion organically turned towards something slightly philosophical. And just like any other teenager, I, in my new-found vanity of being a wise lad, started pouring in many ideas, out of which many I am now sure were tangential or out of context.

As discussion went on, I began bringing many new questions. And at one point of time, my uncle asked his friend (the one who was reading newspaper) to solve one of my intellectual problems. And his answer was such an amusing yet profound one. He, without lifting his head, said…

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“बरख़ुरदार…लगता है आजकल पिक्चरें बहुत देख रहे हो। कम कर दो। ज़िन्दगी आसान हो जाएगी…और सवाल कम”! 🙂 🙂 🙂

You can’t keep hurting people and also blame them for being grumpy.   

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When you exercise your right to behave in a certain manner then you also have to acknowledge that to let you do so, there are other people in your life who adjust and sacrifice. Now that adjustment causes its own share of inconvenience & discomfort which those people bear only because they care for you.

However, we all are humans. So that pain will cause those close people to cringe or shriek once in a while. And it is very unfair on your part to not allow that occasional outlet just because you don’t feel good about it. After all, in lieu of what they have done for you, they at least deserve that leeway.

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Respect people’s sacrifices. They changed themselves to let you ‘stay the way you are’.

Strangely, I see people planning their wardrobes more meticulously than they plan their life.

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I am a strong proponent of not over-planning one’s life, and I have also been a regular witness of what they call “Man proposes…God disposes”. However, I can’t take ‘taking life as it comes’ as an excuse for not planning one’s life. I mean, you can’t misuse philosophy to cover your negligence, reluctance, casualness or laziness. And sadly, that’s precisely what I see a lot of people doing out there…

I respect that life is uncertain, complex and ambiguous; and no one can guarantee what will happen next. But that’s precisely why you should plan the only thing you have a control on – your own actions. You can’t simply solve immediate issues and start avoiding ‘Big picture’ questions. It’s neither meditative nor Zen! It is called escapism or ‘running away from what you can’t handle’.

So, start observing what you are doing, begin to extrapolate what it will lead to, assess how far it is from what you want, take corrective actions to offset, and apply them even with limited or varying success.

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And yes! Now don’t give me that so-called spiritual mumbo-jumbo to counter this. I am equally good at it! 🙂

If you love someone, don’t wish that you should be the only source of happiness in that person’s life.

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In any relationship – and more so in romantic ones – it is natural to seek attention of the other person. However, a desire to be at the center of other person’s life is sure-shot way of strangling the relationship beyond recovery. You can’t be stubborn about being the only reason for that person’s happiness, because one is too small a number to base a life on.

The fact is that when two persons become sole reason for each other’s existence, they only sow seeds of future misery and disillusionment. It’s simple. If you want lasting happiness in a relationship, let the other person receive positive vibes from other people in his or her life. Otherwise, soon the person will neither be happy nor be yours for long.

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Yes! Even if you are possessive, you can’t treat people as possessions.

Difficult times are not for turning depressed, they are for ‘becoming more observant’.

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There are times when you are on the verge of collapsing, and all you can think of is ‘when’. You can see people walking away, with their backs towards you. You can hear the murmur in the background – discussion over your misfortune, with a tone betraying the effort to show sympathy and revealing the underlying ridicule and opportunism. However, you are too exhausted to register voices and too weak to defend your crumbling self.

Well! On such days, when all you want is to surrender to gravity…that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. It’s a rare time when life’s greatest lessons are to be learnt. So retain your waning vigilance and see – see the real colors of people…their true faces…and your place in their priorities. It’s time when all the subplots in your story will get revealed, and most importantly, you will see your own self with naked eyes, without the usual make-up.

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Yes! Precisely when tears well up that your eyes need to be at their sharpest.

It’s amazing how one person’s trauma is merely an incident for another person and just a piece of news for yet another.

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The pain of what happens to a person is sadly now beginning to get limited to that one person. And why so? Well, because we are so inundated with one information after another…one idea after another…one impulse after another, that it’s now rare that something enters our mental systems and commands our exclusive attention for long enough to invoke true empathy.

Yes, in our overstimulated society, we are missing out on depth of experiences, and are growing even shallower in experiencing vicarious feelings – feelings felt by witnessing another person go through an experience. And the most important way to restore that genuinely human quality of compassion is to keep a tab on our craving for diversity of information and instead strive for depth of it.

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The fact is that…“Information can never be a substitute for immersion”.