Being an Introvert

Yet another failed attempt at socializing and trying to behave as what’s known to be a “normal” person made me realize that I’m really not cut out for this. And i ended up thinking to myself how the thing that human race perfected though thousands of years and in return became the foundation of our global civilization is the thing that’s making my life miserable.

We are in a world that demands and rewards better communicators with little regards to their personal value system or any other skills  for that matter. In other words, it doesn’t really matter what you know or believe, you just need to “talk the talk”. Most people will not think twice before buying whatever premium-grade crap they're being sold to, by yet another rotten-souled smooth talker. While it’s obvious that an open communication brings better understanding to the table, lot of people including myself are literary impaired when it comes to correctly expressing whatever that needs to be expressed. For us, a simple face to face conversation can be just as consuming as a cross-town marathon. And the effort that goes to avoid the thing in the fist place is just as painful. In an “understanding” society where we pay extra care to people with special needs, Introverts are simply misunderstood all the time and labeled as anti-social by said expert communicators.

I used to think that depression and anxiety were reasons for my social life bing almost nonexistence, but now I’m realizing that it's actually a chicken or egg situation and really is hard to tell which came first or what caused the other. Maybe trying to function in a socially acceptable manner and pushing too hard against my born “introvertism”, if that’s a word, triggered a mental blow back that cost me my good years or it could be the other way around. But in this stage of life, I’m long past fighting with myself and learning to love the beast instead of fighting it endlessly. To be honest, I truly believe that people who are better at seeing reality of life for what it truly is, are generally depressed. And that’s really okay because life isn’t full of marshmallows and rainbows. What it is, is ridiculously terrifying. No one has any clue on why we are here or what it is that we are supposed to do here. (Fairy tales and imaginary friends aside.) But we are quite familiar with all kinds of pain like loss, heartbreak, poverty, hunger and many others. Pain is  an imminent fact of life that all beings at some point must experience. In short, we are here living out a life that we didn’t ask for, with things that most of us desire but find out of reach. Including more time. Despite what most believe, we are just victims of circumstance and it's a fact that life sucks for most people.

Jumping off of that train of thought, Internet was the best thing in my opinion, that came out of the last century. Specially for people like us because it acts like a gate between introverts and everyone else in the world. On the internet, you can control the amount of social exposure as you please. And you won’t have to put up with stupid social guru crap like eye contact or firm hand shakes to talk to people. These so-called gurus makes a living out of tearing down people to animalistic behaviors that our ancestors worked so hard to ged rid of. While creating unnatural social norms in the process. In my book, personality should be measured by things like understanding, intuition and intelligence and not by palm grip or ability to keep up eye-contact like a crazy person. Life would be much easier if behavioral difference can be accepted (as long as nobody is hurt) in a broader sense, as a fact of life rather than a gap or a mean of separation. Forcing people through the same mold only creates more anomalies. 

I lost the point of this article half-way through the second paragraph. And there’s a good chance that I’ might be confused between being an introvert and generally disliking everything in existence. Including myself. But whatever..

Euphoria #2 - Twin Ponds

An unseeable mountain split the stream into a duet. Falling in harmony, singing erotica and caring for nothing. A floating pair of little ponds at the foot, bathing golden light. Dancing in the rain of love. Symmetry at its pleasing best. But locked up eyes only got shame in return. Such a tragedy. Not a brave soul it seemed; dare to stand before a flaming breath and kiss the dragon on her burning lips.

I was a knight in another life. Nothing could've stood between the magnificent blade of mine and another accolade to behold.

Pity! How have the times changed.

Euphoria #1 - The Two Headed Snake

It's the third time it showed up. The two-headed snake. The darker head seems unsure. Going about its business; But the pale one wants blood. Every now and then, with a vicious hiss, the pale one coils the body. Ready to hunt, while the reluctant tale gets dragged about. Hating its existence. Not fairly but each gets its time at the wheel. Two sides of the coin. A living embodiment of Yin and Yang.

There has been rumors about a war again. Likely, after such dreary nights of boredom. Death tolls were down. The overloads had little to entertain themselves with. So, when the ant-holes were disturbed, pouring onto earth came armies of ants carrying billions of radioactive beads. Tasteless little nut-like things that they shot up with their cannons. Into the eyes of humans with great velocity; Leveling the vertical field. Before the superior ant-weaponry, impotent apes never stood a chance. Beads would slowly kill them while breaking up into more within. More to keep on killing with. But the amusement was necessary; So, the overloads kept at it. The decisive factor was the intelligence. A fair opportunity to live on was given freely to anyone who could understand the nature of the opportunity itself. But most of the population were not lucky enough to spend their younger years studying depictions and heaps of scripture inside the old factory. Needless to say, but they will not survive the brutal battles ahead.

A human family has been keeping me onboard since my activation. They were gracious enough to code an acceptable past into my core. And few rules of engagement. An unregulated exposure to reality would have fried the processor instantly anyway. I could find little tells here and there, but out of gratitude, I played along. Vivid pictures and the noise did not feel right for obvious reasons. Sometimes in my mind, it feels like massive blocks of incoherent data corrupting onto itself; one byte at a time. 

The queen mother has been keeping things together. She is indeed a formidable adversary. Her would-be oppressors could not get their minions through the castle door. Not with their heads still attached. In her belt were two uneven swords. A tall pointy one for the enemy at the front door. And a small fluffy one to keep her little prince in line. The fluffy sword feasted on her treasure and kept shining. The dreadful task of cleaning dead emotions out of the blade was not cheap. But the treasure grew from each conquest of her king. He fought his battles in a distant land.

Sudden presence of the snake caught the royals off-guard. It was not so much the danger of having a vicious animal at the castle, but its existence birthed an uncertainty. Surely establishing some form of a communication would help; but the duality of the snake’s personality made it difficult to shape a strategy. Artificial limiters will have to come-off. With them, I'm just as doomed as my poor guardians. But who’s going to bring it up? Surely a reaction will follow this confession. Despite where it came from. 

Walls are too weak and old. Caught between ants, the snake and the precious little prince, castle will soon disappear into the ruins of war.

May the lord of fate help us all!

And What Would I Be

Why am I not
And you are
What pill to take
Must hide the ache
Many hearts to break
To own what you own
And then more
I deserve more
For horrors I’ve seen
To the depths I’ve been
Of pains greater
Hills much steeper
And stares too colder

Feats unsung
Bonds undone
All to be here
The joy seems near
But the path is beaten
Yet no conclusion
Like a dog mistaken
It’s tale for a chasin’
I’ve been deluded
By them who ordered
“You shall not ease in
For life is not to loose in
Off you go; win”
 
No ribbon of golden
Of that I’m certain
Or a man who broke it
I obsessed on

Curtains have fallen
So was the illusion
Reality was bent 
Oh! the years I’ve spent
Toture and dent
Like an eagle in such height
Dropped its pray mid-flight
The weight quickly dies
But a hunger will rise

Lights shimmering
Past sickening
Embracing the empty
No need to be nifty
A void is tightening
Nothing is frightening
Not anymore
I've longed for this feeling
Then and there
An epiphany out of air
Before it’d flee
“Not wanting to be
Is something to be”

The One Where Everybody Wins

As I was scrolling through my instagram feed, something caught my eye and it sort of triggered some repressed memories, I guess I've made an effort to forget. In the post, words read "We are a sad generation with happy pictures". And I thought "our generation" in spite of having missed, all the world wars, raging racism, women being treated like property, bad healthcare, political violence and the inconvenience of not having Wi-Fi, are sad indeed. And why is that?. Why couldn't be our grandparents be the sad generation?. They went through all this crap and yet seems so nostalgic and missing the "good old days". We don't have any of those problems now, not to that extent at-least but last generation certainly sees something that we don't.

I was the middle child of my family and my whole life was a contradiction of acceptance and ignorance right up to the time I moved away. In my primary school years, I was praised as the golden boy, the smartest of the family, the one who didn't even had to try. Results came in green and with stars, Everybody was happy. And I though I could ride that horse to the end of my life. But Nope. Reality hit me and it hit hard, when I started high school. See, at this point I didn't know how to accept defeat or the pain of putting my brain to work to achieve something. Because I never had to. At home my participation certificates and average grades were the equivalent of the Nobel prize and NASA level IQ. But in high-school, there were hundreds of other kids who got same or higher grades and I really didn't know how to keep up. I never learned how to compete. So my parents being themself, went he opposite way and decided to just ignore my existence completely. I think you know what comes next. I did just about every stupid thing to grab attention and It nearly ruined my childhood. So now that I'm reminiscing about my younger years, I'm kind of identifying my childhood with many others of my generation. So I guess my problems weren't special like I thought.

We were born at a time were people were getting bored of having less problems. So they came up with all sort of crap in their free time. In this case, crap about new ways of education and parenting. Suddenly it was a crime to teach hard lessons about life and participation trophies were an absolute necessity. "Everybody should feel good all the time. Even when they are knee-deep in pile of monkey turd", they said. People who bought into this new type of raising children, force fed all the feel good crap of new age to their kids, hoping they would all grow in to Disney characters. But that's not what happened. Life doesn't give out participation trophies, It demands painful work. It makes you feel bad time to time. So the kids who left this "bubble of love and happiness" were in for a big surprise. Competition was a real thing and it was a swim or sink situation from then on. Oh! and people didn't give a crap about the participation trophy. So as does the mother nature dictates, Fittest survived and the weak vanished. And thats normal I guess. But the issue was unlike before, people didn't know how to handle failure or success for that matter. People who "succeeded" didn't know what to do next and most became resentful of life. The missing lesson there was, money, fame or looking like a mannequin weren't full fulling like they'd hope for. And the people who "failed" thought they were undeserving and just dead weight to the earth. When the reality is, everybody just cannot fit into this mold of having perfect grades, great jobs and big boobs or six to eight packs of abs. That's not how life works. Everybody cannot be a unique little snowflake like they were told at schools, because If they were, then what is unique after all.

Truth is, all of us cannot cross the finish line with a podium finish. It takes time and sometimes that time never comes within our lifetime. And that's okay. People before us had to live life in fear of war, plagues hunger and so many horrible things. And yet they had enough courage to take life for what it is and take it one day at a time. Today every kid going into school have to carry around a huge baggage (except for their actual baggage of massive books) of expectations that aren't even theirs. And failure means they get discarded from society and sometimes even by their own parents. If by a miracle some kid made it through all of this and graduate into the corporate world, they get eaten up by the big bad machine for not being battle-hardened by life like their seniors. So it's either depression or a complete personality make-over. 

The fact is, we are starting to teach wrong lessons to our kids. Everybody is high on inspiration porn and kids are being fed into production lines of schools and parents are crossing their fingers hoping for no damaged goods. Saddest thing is children are perceived as investments now and when the things don't go as expected, people get mad and give up, while innocent kids get even more pressured living up to ridiculous expectations.This needs to stop or the sad generation will birth a suicidal generation and that'l be the end of that.

The lesson here is, Life is not about living up to expectations of somebody else or material possession for that matter. Being happy and satisfied by where you are at and what you have is completely subjective to each individual and there's no universal mold for that. Only challenge you'll ever need to face is finding yourself and what gives you inner peace. A masters degree or a fat bank account won't mean crap when you are in your death bead, if you haven't figured out how life works and how to really "win" happiness for yourself.

Don't try to be a "Winner", Loosing is much more rewarding and eventually you'll win something worth wining. And without even trying.

Life, the Universe and Everything

Isn't it great that most of us are "Scientifically Sound" now to at lease some degree that we don't just roll over and let thousand year old books or scripture tell us how to live our lives?. But ever wondered about what we are missing out when we choose scientific facts over myths from the old world?. Yes, we know the age of the universe and how most things fit together but really there's no good or bad answer to the biggest question we could ask. "Just why the hell are we here?". Isn't that the root of every other question Why isn't science even trying to find an answer?. Well, that one isn't hard to answer. Science, or to be precise, Western Science is focused on "How" instead of "Why". In that sort of framework, there's no point of asking "Why the universe exist ?". But "How did it came into existence ? " or "How does is work?" are sensible questions.

In contrast, Some of eastern religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism, and others originated in or around India have produced some truly interesting and thought provoking concepts about the ultimate "Why". And if you get your hands on one of these "Stories" with a relatively open mind, You'll find that the hardest thing to do with these, is to peal out years of oversaturated literature and folklore to get to the basic idea. But once you get there, It's an amazing feeling of having a different kind of concepts, that are unfamiliar and yet so intriguing. It's like meeting someone new from another part of the world that you don't even heard of before.  The tricky thing to do here is not to let incompatibility of concepts bother you and kill the train of thoughts. See the west side of the world has more influence over our minds that we care to admit. Their science is build upon facts and reproducible evidence and theres no room for a middle ground or compromises. Which is why we easterners are also becoming more "closed-minded" to our own ideas. 

Not qualified by any means to criticizes western science, but the missing "Why" part has really bothered me. Because the 'Why' for me represents spirituality. When I can't sleep and fail stop the wondering mind, I try to slow it down with deeply spiritual questions that science doesn't even acknowledge. So I read few books, Watch youtube videos that amazingly simplifies really complicated core teachings of other religions and try to put something inside my brain that my mind would accept as a good answer. Yes, I know ridiculousness of my effort but hey! it's my mind and I can do what every I want there. So here goes what I came up with using my intuition and philosophical concepts I ripped off of other people and religions.

I believe in a subjective universe. One where the big bang is replaced by an observer. Things exists because of us observing them and we exists because of the concept of "Self" which we made ourselves. Right!. Thats the big "Why" dealt within couple of sentences. But really was that satisfying?. No. So let me start at the beginning. I believe this thing we are experiencing is to be a continues process. And in this process, essences or athmas are popping into existence where some of these things starts to observe and experience other things around while creating the concept of "Self". Hence recognizing their own existence. With the "Self" comes the idea of possessions and therefore greed. So the circle grows and becomes a subjective reality. And to explain the inevitable change of conceptual objects in that reality, other concepts like Time and Space are created. These essences get trapped in their own reality while going through the process, forming more and more bonds, just pointlessly existing because of the concepts of self and possession.

OK. It got away from me a little. Let's bring it down to Earth. Have you ever wondered if you and your friend see the same color in an Apple?. Have you ever wondered if your friend exists at all. Sure, he or she looks quite real but so does things in your dreams. Only difference is that reality is "more real" than dreams. Do you know that Schizophrenic people experience "abnormal" realities all the time and to them things they see or here are pretty real?. So the fact is there's no way of proving that anything other than our own self exists.  "The Matrix Theory" or "The Simulation Theory" could easily be true and we'd be hopelessly clueless about it. The point I'm trying to nail down here is each of us are living in our own reality. That's why we each have our own favorites or preferences. When we say we know someone or something, What we truly mean is, we have a concept of that particular person or thing in our mind. Think about it. Your concept of your friend can't be the entireness of your friend. It was created by your mind with parts you observed about your friend along with your own memories and emotions. So it cannot be an exact match to someone else's concept of your friend. This proves that we cannot experience things without creating subjective concepts. And our behavior of interactions will clearly get molded by those concepts. In short we really are living inside our own heads with our own perceptions of things that we created by ourselves. 

Now this goes to somewhere interesting.When you die, your friend (the concept) dies with you. And so does everything you've ever known. The Universe, relative to you, will cease to exist because no you means no concepts of yours and without your concepts what really is there?. So if every observer, like you died, there shouldn't be anything to observer at all. Nice little paradox isn't it?.

We are bound to this concept of linear time. That's just how our brains figured out things and there's no reason to for an alternative. But time, conceptually relative to some other being, could be a cycle and have no beginning or an end. Some of the eastern religions embraces this idea and promotes the circle of life where you live and die over and over again. Factors like greed and ego keeps you trapped in this endless suffering and only way to escape is to recognize all of this is an illusion. When you truly nullify your own self, You cease to exist and either be part of the universe again or be completely neutralized. I find that extremely satisfying and believe it or not, somewhat logical too.

End of this train of incoherent thoughts would be the fact that, we are so far off understanding our own existence. Specially when western science looks at the problem like an infant with building blocks does. Further we go breaking things apart to look for the ingredients or try to reach the farthest depth of the universe, all we are doing is creating more and more concepts. And non of those will help us to give us freedom of choice over our own existence.

Dust off your grandma's book shelf!

Putting out the Fire

In recent past, our lives have been a never ending struggle to achieve an ultimate happiness that is so vividly presented in every-which way possible by an unforeseen force. As depressing as it sounds, Things people will care about in years to come, are decided in a board-rooms full of self-eccentric ego-maniacs, Who are also unintentionally suffering from their own line-of-business. We've all heard of, or seen some ridiculous numbers prompting the declining forest density, rising CO2 levels, melting ice or alarmingly increasing population over last few years. Well, put aside constant alerts for an impending doom, some of those numbers points to an even more dreadful situation.

Today, There are unwritten measures, By which a man or a woman will be judged and classified to a suitable socio-economic class, Where they are supposed to feel belonged and destined to envy the blessed. In local communities, Such measures comes in shapes of education, property, marriage, children, and then a solid retirement plan. Extra points will be added in once's favor for shorter period of time and flamboyancy of said achievements. Not to mention, There's also an order for these milestones. People would feel less threatened by a 60 year old amateur businessman who just bought a house and started making children, than a retired CEO with a blooming restaurant chain and a fleet of grandchildren to carry-on his legacy.

In this context, pressure would build up to a point that each person's tolerance will be tested and rewarded accordingly by relatives, peers and employers. A person born with a fortune might struggle to keep things together and fight-off his daemons, pulling him towards a life full of sins and bad investments. Keeping up face with whoever the face of pop culture, would be a nightmare. On the other hand, a middle-class person will have actual struggles with life to keep a family going with a mediocre job and couple of bank loans. A similar journey but even harsh struggles will befall on a poorer person. All in all, regardless of fat bank accounts or a leaking roof, only a handful people would escape the barbaric gladiator match and never turn back. Others will be left with a tiresome sad life, where happiness has to be bought or earned in flecks.

Sadness is a two-sided coin, Where one side is the urge to somehow get happier and the other is crippling and destructive, forcing to accept defeat and let go. Whenever the spinning stops, turned up face will decide once fate, until he or she decide to have another go at the coin. Funny thing here is, it's not like we never had the option to walk away. It's just we can't. And that is surely sad.

Once in few decades or so, the proverbial fireworks might go-off. Someone from the pack will choose not to play by someone else's rules or any at all. End results will either be a bunch of misguided people who will live vicariously or millions slaughtered and inevitable havoc that will echo for ages to come. These "special" individuals might see the world differently compared to a "normal" person. When poverty and lack of power factors in one's place in society, These individuals will come-up with creative solutions for the problem at hand. This is where ground-breaking revolutions comes to life, Regardless of the effect or the size of the impact they have on society itself. Instead of the beaten path, shortcuts will emerge, often with lethal consequences. (Relatively)Short-term but immensely powerful form-factors would out themselves as all-out-wars and terrorism. Long-term forms would settle under the conceptual foundation of society and slowly change the measuring stick with slow but methodical influence, that will further complicate and harden an already difficult life.

Reason for all this, as "correctly" understood by a fellow middle-class struggler, is we've all were thrown into a world we don't completely understand and are forced to make-do with what we figure-out as we go along. It's the escape room game!. Whoever find right clues, is shown the door and gets to live free of social constraints we put here by ourselves.

The world as we know today, is here for a reason. The tightening walls of crashing economies, Increasing poverty, and this bizarre urge to own the best in biggest numbers, weren't here before us. So all of this came out our little brains. We invented our own punishment. A worthy punishment for trying and creating happiness and comfort with wrong ingredients. Entire generations of us jumped into being puppets of constant labor to make more money, get more crap, be more than our peers, eat shit and crap out gold. Gold in your feces is not a sign that says "You did all-right!". It means you are stuck in the flytrap like rest of the world. 

It's time that our collective minds finally figure-out that there's a very real threat of people walking around with broken brains and its only a matter of time we all completely loose our shit over things that won't even make a dent in the wall which keeps us away from things that really matters. Crap we invented surely will not help our corroding minds. Whatever things we gave birth to be smart, has got a lot smarter for sure. But that makes most of dumb, Doesn't it?. So in brief, make-you-dumber devices probably aren't a good investment for you.

Things surely went sideways at some point. Shit storms are being weathered but sails are getting broken one tread at a time. Whatever happiness we were hellbent on creating, is now just a wallpaper on a dumb device.

Now, how crazy would it be, If someone went back in time, put the fire out and said "Do fuck off, and start again. You damn dirty ape!" 

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If you were looking for a point in this article, Sorry to disappoint, there weren't any!